summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/old/8insm10h.htm
blob: f653a22475665a5fe1a5c8ca6783eba62829aedb (plain) 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
1123
1124
1125
1126
1127
1128
1129
1130
1131
1132
1133
1134
1135
1136
1137
1138
1139
1140
1141
1142
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147
1148
1149
1150
1151
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178
1179
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
1186
1187
1188
1189
1190
1191
1192
1193
1194
1195
1196
1197
1198
1199
1200
1201
1202
1203
1204
1205
1206
1207
1208
1209
1210
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235
1236
1237
1238
1239
1240
1241
1242
1243
1244
1245
1246
1247
1248
1249
1250
1251
1252
1253
1254
1255
1256
1257
1258
1259
1260
1261
1262
1263
1264
1265
1266
1267
1268
1269
1270
1271
1272
1273
1274
1275
1276
1277
1278
1279
1280
1281
1282
1283
1284
1285
1286
1287
1288
1289
1290
1291
1292
1293
1294
1295
1296
1297
1298
1299
1300
1301
1302
1303
1304
1305
1306
1307
1308
1309
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
1323
1324
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329
1330
1331
1332
1333
1334
1335
1336
1337
1338
1339
1340
1341
1342
1343
1344
1345
1346
1347
1348
1349
1350
1351
1352
1353
1354
1355
1356
1357
1358
1359
1360
1361
1362
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390
1391
1392
1393
1394
1395
1396
1397
1398
1399
1400
1401
1402
1403
1404
1405
1406
1407
1408
1409
1410
1411
1412
1413
1414
1415
1416
1417
1418
1419
1420
1421
1422
1423
1424
1425
1426
1427
1428
1429
1430
1431
1432
1433
1434
1435
1436
1437
1438
1439
1440
1441
1442
1443
1444
1445
1446
1447
1448
1449
1450
1451
1452
1453
1454
1455
1456
1457
1458
1459
1460
1461
1462
1463
1464
1465
1466
1467
1468
1469
1470
1471
1472
1473
1474
1475
1476
1477
1478
1479
1480
1481
1482
1483
1484
1485
1486
1487
1488
1489
1490
1491
1492
1493
1494
1495
1496
1497
1498
1499
1500
1501
1502
1503
1504
1505
1506
1507
1508
1509
1510
1511
1512
1513
1514
1515
1516
1517
1518
1519
1520
1521
1522
1523
1524
1525
1526
1527
1528
1529
1530
1531
1532
1533
1534
1535
1536
1537
1538
1539
1540
1541
1542
1543
1544
1545
1546
1547
1548
1549
1550
1551
1552
1553
1554
1555
1556
1557
1558
1559
1560
1561
1562
1563
1564
1565
1566
1567
1568
1569
1570
1571
1572
1573
1574
1575
1576
1577
1578
1579
1580
1581
1582
1583
1584
1585
1586
1587
1588
1589
1590
1591
1592
1593
1594
1595
1596
1597
1598
1599
1600
1601
1602
1603
1604
1605
1606
1607
1608
1609
1610
1611
1612
1613
1614
1615
1616
1617
1618
1619
1620
1621
1622
1623
1624
1625
1626
1627
1628
1629
1630
1631
1632
1633
1634
1635
1636
1637
1638
1639
1640
1641
1642
1643
1644
1645
1646
1647
1648
1649
1650
1651
1652
1653
1654
1655
1656
1657
1658
1659
1660
1661
1662
1663
1664
1665
1666
1667
1668
1669
1670
1671
1672
1673
1674
1675
1676
1677
1678
1679
1680
1681
1682
1683
1684
1685
1686
1687
1688
1689
1690
1691
1692
1693
1694
1695
1696
1697
1698
1699
1700
1701
1702
1703
1704
1705
1706
1707
1708
1709
1710
1711
1712
1713
1714
1715
1716
1717
1718
1719
1720
1721
1722
1723
1724
1725
1726
1727
1728
1729
1730
1731
1732
1733
1734
1735
1736
1737
1738
1739
1740
1741
1742
1743
1744
1745
1746
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
1774
1775
1776
1777
1778
1779
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802
1803
1804
1805
1806
1807
1808
1809
1810
1811
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
2035
2036
2037
2038
2039
2040
2041
2042
2043
2044
2045
2046
2047
2048
2049
2050
2051
2052
2053
2054
2055
2056
2057
2058
2059
2060
2061
2062
2063
2064
2065
2066
2067
2068
2069
2070
2071
2072
2073
2074
2075
2076
2077
2078
2079
2080
2081
2082
2083
2084
2085
2086
2087
2088
2089
2090
2091
2092
2093
2094
2095
2096
2097
2098
2099
2100
2101
2102
2103
2104
2105
2106
2107
2108
2109
2110
2111
2112
2113
2114
2115
2116
2117
2118
2119
2120
2121
2122
2123
2124
2125
2126
2127
2128
2129
2130
2131
2132
2133
2134
2135
2136
2137
2138
2139
2140
2141
2142
2143
2144
2145
2146
2147
2148
2149
2150
2151
2152
2153
2154
2155
2156
2157
2158
2159
2160
2161
2162
2163
2164
2165
2166
2167
2168
2169
2170
2171
2172
2173
2174
2175
2176
2177
2178
2179
2180
2181
2182
2183
2184
2185
2186
2187
2188
2189
2190
2191
2192
2193
2194
2195
2196
2197
2198
2199
2200
2201
2202
2203
2204
2205
2206
2207
2208
2209
2210
2211
2212
2213
2214
2215
2216
2217
2218
2219
2220
2221
2222
2223
2224
2225
2226
2227
2228
2229
2230
2231
2232
2233
2234
2235
2236
2237
2238
2239
2240
2241
2242
2243
2244
2245
2246
2247
2248
2249
2250
2251
2252
2253
2254
2255
2256
2257
2258
2259
2260
2261
2262
2263
2264
2265
2266
2267
2268
2269
2270
2271
2272
2273
2274
2275
2276
2277
2278
2279
2280
2281
2282
2283
2284
2285
2286
2287
2288
2289
2290
2291
2292
2293
2294
2295
2296
2297
2298
2299
2300
2301
2302
2303
2304
2305
2306
2307
2308
2309
2310
2311
2312
2313
2314
2315
2316
2317
2318
2319
2320
2321
2322
2323
2324
2325
2326
2327
2328
2329
2330
2331
2332
2333
2334
2335
2336
2337
2338
2339
2340
2341
2342
2343
2344
2345
2346
2347
2348
2349
2350
2351
2352
2353
2354
2355
2356
2357
2358
2359
2360
2361
2362
2363
2364
2365
2366
2367
2368
2369
2370
2371
2372
2373
2374
2375
2376
2377
2378
2379
2380
2381
2382
2383
2384
2385
2386
2387
2388
2389
2390
2391
2392
2393
2394
2395
2396
2397
2398
2399
2400
2401
2402
2403
2404
2405
2406
2407
2408
2409
2410
2411
2412
2413
2414
2415
2416
2417
2418
2419
2420
2421
2422
2423
2424
2425
2426
2427
2428
2429
2430
2431
2432
2433
2434
2435
2436
2437
2438
2439
2440
2441
2442
2443
2444
2445
2446
2447
2448
2449
2450
2451
2452
2453
2454
2455
2456
2457
2458
2459
2460
2461
2462
2463
2464
2465
2466
2467
2468
2469
2470
2471
2472
2473
2474
2475
2476
2477
2478
2479
2480
2481
2482
2483
2484
2485
2486
2487
2488
2489
2490
2491
2492
2493
2494
2495
2496
2497
2498
2499
2500
2501
2502
2503
2504
2505
2506
2507
2508
2509
2510
2511
2512
2513
2514
2515
2516
2517
2518
2519
2520
2521
2522
2523
2524
2525
2526
2527
2528
2529
2530
2531
2532
2533
2534
2535
2536
2537
2538
2539
2540
2541
2542
2543
2544
2545
2546
2547
2548
2549
2550
2551
2552
2553
2554
2555
2556
2557
2558
2559
2560
2561
2562
2563
2564
2565
2566
2567
2568
2569
2570
2571
2572
2573
2574
2575
2576
2577
2578
2579
2580
2581
2582
2583
2584
2585
2586
2587
2588
2589
2590
2591
2592
2593
2594
2595
2596
2597
2598
2599
2600
2601
2602
2603
2604
2605
2606
2607
2608
2609
2610
2611
2612
2613
2614
2615
2616
2617
2618
2619
2620
2621
2622
2623
2624
2625
2626
2627
2628
2629
2630
2631
2632
2633
2634
2635
2636
2637
2638
2639
2640
2641
2642
2643
2644
2645
2646
2647
2648
2649
2650
2651
2652
2653
2654
2655
2656
2657
2658
2659
2660
2661
2662
2663
2664
2665
2666
2667
2668
2669
2670
2671
2672
2673
2674
2675
2676
2677
2678
2679
2680
2681
2682
2683
2684
2685
2686
2687
2688
2689
2690
2691
2692
2693
2694
2695
2696
2697
2698
2699
2700
2701
2702
2703
2704
2705
2706
2707
2708
2709
2710
2711
2712
2713
2714
2715
2716
2717
2718
2719
2720
2721
2722
2723
2724
2725
2726
2727
2728
2729
2730
2731
2732
2733
2734
2735
2736
2737
2738
2739
2740
2741
2742
2743
2744
2745
2746
2747
2748
2749
2750
2751
2752
2753
2754
2755
2756
2757
2758
2759
2760
2761
2762
2763
2764
2765
2766
2767
2768
2769
2770
2771
2772
2773
2774
2775
2776
2777
2778
2779
2780
2781
2782
2783
2784
2785
2786
2787
2788
2789
2790
2791
2792
2793
2794
2795
2796
2797
2798
2799
2800
2801
2802
2803
2804
2805
2806
2807
2808
2809
2810
2811
2812
2813
2814
2815
2816
2817
2818
2819
2820
2821
2822
2823
2824
2825
2826
2827
2828
2829
2830
2831
2832
2833
2834
2835
2836
2837
2838
2839
2840
2841
2842
2843
2844
2845
2846
2847
2848
2849
2850
2851
2852
2853
2854
2855
2856
2857
2858
2859
2860
2861
2862
2863
2864
2865
2866
2867
2868
2869
2870
2871
2872
2873
2874
2875
2876
2877
2878
2879
2880
2881
2882
2883
2884
2885
2886
2887
2888
2889
2890
2891
2892
2893
2894
2895
2896
2897
2898
2899
2900
2901
2902
2903
2904
2905
2906
2907
2908
2909
2910
2911
2912
2913
2914
2915
2916
2917
2918
2919
2920
2921
2922
2923
2924
2925
2926
2927
2928
2929
2930
2931
2932
2933
2934
2935
2936
2937
2938
2939
2940
2941
2942
2943
2944
2945
2946
2947
2948
2949
2950
2951
2952
2953
2954
2955
2956
2957
2958
2959
2960
2961
2962
2963
2964
2965
2966
2967
2968
2969
2970
2971
2972
2973
2974
2975
2976
2977
2978
2979
2980
2981
2982
2983
2984
2985
2986
2987
2988
2989
2990
2991
2992
2993
2994
2995
2996
2997
2998
2999
3000
3001
3002
3003
3004
3005
3006
3007
3008
3009
3010
3011
3012
3013
3014
3015
3016
3017
3018
3019
3020
3021
3022
3023
3024
3025
3026
3027
3028
3029
3030
3031
3032
3033
3034
3035
3036
3037
3038
3039
3040
3041
3042
3043
3044
3045
3046
3047
3048
3049
3050
3051
3052
3053
3054
3055
3056
3057
3058
3059
3060
3061
3062
3063
3064
3065
3066
3067
3068
3069
3070
3071
3072
3073
3074
3075
3076
3077
3078
3079
3080
3081
3082
3083
3084
3085
3086
3087
3088
3089
3090
3091
3092
3093
3094
3095
3096
3097
3098
3099
3100
3101
3102
3103
3104
3105
3106
3107
3108
3109
3110
3111
3112
3113
3114
3115
3116
3117
3118
3119
3120
3121
3122
3123
3124
3125
3126
3127
3128
3129
3130
3131
3132
3133
3134
3135
3136
3137
3138
3139
3140
3141
3142
3143
3144
3145
3146
3147
3148
3149
3150
3151
3152
3153
3154
3155
3156
3157
3158
3159
3160
3161
3162
3163
3164
3165
3166
3167
3168
3169
3170
3171
3172
3173
3174
3175
3176
3177
3178
3179
3180
3181
3182
3183
3184
3185
3186
3187
3188
3189
3190
3191
3192
3193
3194
3195
3196
3197
3198
3199
3200
3201
3202
3203
3204
3205
3206
3207
3208
3209
3210
3211
3212
3213
3214
3215
3216
3217
3218
3219
3220
3221
3222
3223
3224
3225
3226
3227
3228
3229
3230
3231
3232
3233
3234
3235
3236
3237
3238
3239
3240
3241
3242
3243
3244
3245
3246
3247
3248
3249
3250
3251
3252
3253
3254
3255
3256
3257
3258
3259
3260
3261
3262
3263
3264
3265
3266
3267
3268
3269
3270
3271
3272
3273
3274
3275
3276
3277
3278
3279
3280
3281
3282
3283
3284
3285
3286
3287
3288
3289
3290
3291
3292
3293
3294
3295
3296
3297
3298
3299
3300
3301
3302
3303
3304
3305
3306
3307
3308
3309
3310
3311
3312
3313
3314
3315
3316
3317
3318
3319
3320
3321
3322
3323
3324
3325
3326
3327
3328
3329
3330
3331
3332
3333
3334
3335
3336
3337
3338
3339
3340
3341
3342
3343
3344
3345
3346
3347
3348
3349
3350
3351
3352
3353
3354
3355
3356
3357
3358
3359
3360
3361
3362
3363
3364
3365
3366
3367
3368
3369
3370
3371
3372
3373
3374
3375
3376
3377
3378
3379
3380
3381
3382
3383
3384
3385
3386
3387
3388
3389
3390
3391
3392
3393
3394
3395
3396
3397
3398
3399
3400
3401
3402
3403
3404
3405
3406
3407
3408
3409
3410
3411
3412
3413
3414
3415
3416
3417
3418
3419
3420
3421
3422
3423
3424
3425
3426
3427
3428
3429
3430
3431
3432
3433
3434
3435
3436
3437
3438
3439
3440
3441
3442
3443
3444
3445
3446
3447
3448
3449
3450
3451
3452
3453
3454
3455
3456
3457
3458
3459
3460
3461
3462
3463
3464
3465
3466
3467
3468
3469
3470
3471
3472
3473
3474
3475
3476
3477
3478
3479
3480
3481
3482
3483
3484
3485
3486
3487
3488
3489
3490
3491
3492
3493
3494
3495
3496
3497
3498
3499
3500
3501
3502
3503
3504
3505
3506
3507
3508
3509
3510
3511
3512
3513
3514
3515
3516
3517
3518
3519
3520
3521
3522
3523
3524
3525
3526
3527
3528
3529
3530
3531
3532
3533
3534
3535
3536
3537
3538
3539
3540
3541
3542
3543
3544
3545
3546
3547
3548
3549
3550
3551
3552
3553
3554
3555
3556
3557
3558
3559
3560
3561
3562
3563
3564
3565
3566
3567
3568
3569
3570
3571
3572
3573
3574
3575
3576
3577
3578
3579
3580
3581
3582
3583
3584
3585
3586
3587
3588
3589
3590
3591
3592
3593
3594
3595
3596
3597
3598
3599
3600
3601
3602
3603
3604
3605
3606
3607
3608
3609
3610
3611
3612
3613
3614
3615
3616
3617
3618
3619
3620
3621
3622
3623
3624
3625
3626
3627
3628
3629
3630
3631
3632
3633
3634
3635
3636
3637
3638
3639
3640
3641
3642
3643
3644
3645
3646
3647
3648
3649
3650
3651
3652
3653
3654
3655
3656
3657
3658
3659
3660
3661
3662
3663
3664
3665
3666
3667
3668
3669
3670
3671
3672
3673
3674
3675
3676
3677
3678
3679
3680
3681
3682
3683
3684
3685
3686
3687
3688
3689
3690
3691
3692
3693
3694
3695
3696
3697
3698
3699
3700
3701
3702
3703
3704
3705
3706
3707
3708
3709
3710
3711
3712
3713
3714
3715
3716
3717
3718
3719
3720
3721
3722
3723
3724
3725
3726
3727
3728
3729
3730
3731
3732
3733
3734
3735
3736
3737
3738
3739
3740
3741
3742
3743
3744
3745
3746
3747
3748
3749
3750
3751
3752
3753
3754
3755
3756
3757
3758
3759
3760
3761
3762
3763
3764
3765
3766
3767
3768
3769
3770
3771
3772
3773
3774
3775
3776
3777
3778
3779
3780
3781
3782
3783
3784
3785
3786
3787
3788
3789
3790
3791
3792
3793
3794
3795
3796
3797
3798
3799
3800
3801
3802
3803
3804
3805
3806
3807
3808
3809
3810
3811
3812
3813
3814
3815
3816
3817
3818
3819
3820
3821
3822
3823
3824
3825
3826
3827
3828
3829
3830
3831
3832
3833
3834
3835
3836
3837
3838
3839
3840
3841
3842
3843
3844
3845
3846
3847
3848
3849
3850
3851
3852
3853
3854
3855
3856
3857
3858
3859
3860
3861
3862
3863
3864
3865
3866
3867
3868
3869
3870
3871
3872
3873
3874
3875
3876
3877
3878
3879
3880
3881
3882
3883
3884
3885
3886
3887
3888
3889
3890
3891
3892
3893
3894
3895
3896
3897
3898
3899
3900
3901
3902
3903
3904
3905
3906
3907
3908
3909
3910
3911
3912
3913
3914
3915
3916
3917
3918
3919
3920
3921
3922
3923
3924
3925
3926
3927
3928
3929
3930
3931
3932
3933
3934
3935
3936
3937
3938
3939
3940
3941
3942
3943
3944
3945
3946
3947
3948
3949
3950
3951
3952
3953
3954
3955
3956
3957
3958
3959
3960
3961
3962
3963
3964
3965
3966
3967
3968
3969
3970
3971
3972
3973
3974
3975
3976
3977
3978
3979
3980
3981
3982
3983
3984
3985
3986
3987
3988
3989
3990
3991
3992
3993
3994
3995
3996
3997
3998
3999
4000
4001
4002
4003
4004
4005
4006
4007
4008
4009
4010
4011
4012
4013
4014
4015
4016
4017
4018
4019
4020
4021
4022
4023
4024
4025
4026
4027
4028
4029
4030
4031
4032
4033
4034
4035
4036
4037
4038
4039
4040
4041
4042
4043
4044
4045
4046
4047
4048
4049
4050
4051
4052
4053
4054
4055
4056
4057
4058
4059
4060
4061
4062
4063
4064
4065
4066
4067
4068
4069
4070
4071
4072
4073
4074
4075
4076
4077
4078
4079
4080
4081
4082
4083
4084
4085
4086
4087
4088
4089
4090
4091
4092
4093
4094
4095
4096
4097
4098
4099
4100
4101
4102
4103
4104
4105
4106
4107
4108
4109
4110
4111
4112
4113
4114
4115
4116
4117
4118
4119
4120
4121
4122
4123
4124
4125
4126
4127
4128
4129
4130
4131
4132
4133
4134
4135
4136
4137
4138
4139
4140
4141
4142
4143
4144
4145
4146
4147
4148
4149
4150
4151
4152
4153
4154
4155
4156
4157
4158
4159
4160
4161
4162
4163
4164
4165
4166
4167
4168
4169
4170
4171
4172
4173
4174
4175
4176
4177
4178
4179
4180
4181
4182
4183
4184
4185
4186
4187
4188
4189
4190
4191
4192
4193
4194
4195
4196
4197
4198
4199
4200
4201
4202
4203
4204
4205
4206
4207
4208
4209
4210
4211
4212
4213
4214
4215
4216
4217
4218
4219
4220
4221
4222
4223
4224
4225
4226
4227
4228
4229
4230
4231
4232
4233
4234
4235
4236
4237
4238
4239
4240
4241
4242
4243
4244
4245
4246
4247
4248
4249
4250
4251
4252
4253
4254
4255
4256
4257
4258
4259
4260
4261
4262
4263
4264
4265
4266
4267
4268
4269
4270
4271
4272
4273
4274
4275
4276
4277
4278
4279
4280
4281
4282
4283
4284
4285
4286
4287
4288
4289
4290
4291
4292
4293
4294
4295
4296
4297
4298
4299
4300
4301
4302
4303
4304
4305
4306
4307
4308
4309
4310
4311
4312
4313
4314
4315
4316
4317
4318
4319
4320
4321
4322
4323
4324
4325
4326
4327
4328
4329
4330
4331
4332
4333
4334
4335
4336
4337
4338
4339
4340
4341
4342
4343
4344
4345
4346
4347
4348
4349
4350
4351
4352
4353
4354
4355
4356
4357
4358
4359
4360
4361
4362
4363
4364
4365
4366
4367
4368
4369
4370
4371
4372
4373
4374
4375
4376
4377
4378
4379
4380
4381
4382
4383
4384
4385
4386
4387
4388
4389
4390
4391
4392
4393
4394
4395
4396
4397
4398
4399
4400
4401
4402
4403
4404
4405
4406
4407
4408
4409
4410
4411
4412
4413
4414
4415
4416
4417
4418
4419
4420
4421
4422
4423
4424
4425
4426
4427
4428
4429
4430
4431
4432
4433
4434
4435
4436
4437
4438
4439
4440
4441
4442
4443
4444
4445
4446
4447
4448
4449
4450
4451
4452
4453
4454
4455
4456
4457
4458
4459
4460
4461
4462
4463
4464
4465
4466
4467
4468
4469
4470
4471
4472
4473
4474
4475
4476
4477
4478
4479
4480
4481
4482
4483
4484
4485
4486
4487
4488
4489
4490
4491
4492
4493
4494
4495
4496
4497
4498
4499
4500
4501
4502
4503
4504
4505
4506
4507
4508
4509
4510
4511
4512
4513
4514
4515
4516
4517
4518
4519
4520
4521
4522
4523
4524
4525
4526
4527
4528
4529
4530
4531
4532
4533
4534
4535
4536
4537
4538
4539
4540
4541
4542
4543
4544
4545
4546
4547
4548
4549
4550
4551
4552
4553
4554
4555
4556
4557
4558
4559
4560
4561
4562
4563
4564
4565
4566
4567
4568
4569
4570
4571
4572
4573
4574
4575
4576
4577
4578
4579
4580
4581
4582
4583
4584
4585
4586
4587
4588
4589
4590
4591
4592
4593
4594
4595
4596
4597
4598
4599
4600
4601
4602
4603
4604
4605
4606
4607
4608
4609
4610
4611
4612
4613
4614
4615
4616
4617
4618
4619
4620
4621
4622
4623
4624
4625
4626
4627
4628
4629
4630
4631
4632
4633
4634
4635
4636
4637
4638
4639
4640
4641
4642
4643
4644
4645
4646
4647
4648
4649
4650
4651
4652
4653
4654
4655
4656
4657
4658
4659
4660
4661
4662
4663
4664
4665
4666
4667
4668
4669
4670
4671
4672
4673
4674
4675
4676
4677
4678
4679
4680
4681
4682
4683
4684
4685
4686
4687
4688
4689
4690
4691
4692
4693
4694
4695
4696
4697
4698
4699
4700
4701
4702
4703
4704
4705
4706
4707
4708
4709
4710
4711
4712
4713
4714
4715
4716
4717
4718
4719
4720
4721
4722
4723
4724
4725
4726
4727
4728
4729
4730
4731
4732
4733
4734
4735
4736
4737
4738
4739
4740
4741
4742
4743
4744
4745
4746
4747
4748
4749
4750
4751
4752
4753
4754
4755
4756
4757
4758
4759
4760
4761
4762
4763
4764
4765
4766
4767
4768
4769
4770
4771
4772
4773
4774
4775
4776
4777
4778
4779
4780
4781
4782
4783
4784
4785
4786
4787
4788
4789
4790
4791
4792
4793
4794
4795
4796
4797
4798
4799
4800
4801
4802
4803
4804
4805
4806
4807
4808
4809
4810
4811
4812
4813
4814
4815
4816
4817
4818
4819
4820
4821
4822
4823
4824
4825
4826
4827
4828
4829
4830
4831
4832
4833
4834
4835
4836
4837
4838
4839
4840
4841
4842
4843
4844
4845
4846
4847
4848
4849
4850
4851
4852
4853
4854
4855
4856
4857
4858
4859
4860
4861
4862
4863
4864
4865
4866
4867
4868
4869
4870
4871
4872
4873
4874
4875
4876
4877
4878
4879
4880
4881
4882
4883
4884
4885
4886
4887
4888
4889
4890
4891
4892
4893
4894
4895
4896
4897
4898
4899
4900
4901
4902
4903
4904
4905
4906
4907
4908
4909
4910
4911
4912
4913
4914
4915
4916
4917
4918
4919
4920
4921
4922
4923
4924
4925
4926
4927
4928
4929
4930
4931
4932
4933
4934
4935
4936
4937
4938
4939
4940
4941
4942
4943
4944
4945
4946
4947
4948
4949
4950
4951
4952
4953
4954
4955
4956
4957
4958
4959
4960
4961
4962
4963
4964
4965
4966
4967
4968
4969
4970
4971
4972
4973
4974
4975
4976
4977
4978
4979
4980
4981
4982
4983
4984
4985
4986
4987
4988
4989
4990
4991
4992
4993
4994
4995
4996
4997
4998
4999
5000
5001
5002
5003
5004
5005
5006
5007
5008
5009
5010
5011
5012
5013
5014
5015
5016
5017
5018
5019
5020
5021
5022
5023
5024
5025
5026
5027
5028
5029
5030
5031
5032
5033
5034
5035
5036
5037
5038
5039
5040
5041
5042
5043
5044
5045
5046
5047
5048
5049
5050
5051
5052
5053
5054
5055
5056
5057
5058
5059
5060
5061
5062
5063
5064
5065
5066
5067
5068
5069
5070
5071
5072
5073
5074
5075
5076
5077
5078
5079
5080
5081
5082
5083
5084
5085
5086
5087
5088
5089
5090
5091
5092
5093
5094
5095
5096
5097
5098
5099
5100
5101
5102
5103
5104
5105
5106
5107
5108
5109
5110
5111
5112
5113
5114
5115
5116
5117
5118
5119
5120
5121
5122
5123
5124
5125
5126
5127
5128
5129
5130
5131
5132
5133
5134
5135
5136
5137
5138
5139
5140
5141
5142
5143
5144
5145
5146
5147
5148
5149
5150
5151
5152
5153
5154
5155
5156
5157
5158
5159
5160
5161
5162
5163
5164
5165
5166
5167
5168
5169
5170
5171
5172
5173
5174
5175
5176
5177
5178
5179
5180
5181
5182
5183
5184
5185
5186
5187
5188
5189
5190
5191
5192
5193
5194
5195
5196
5197
5198
5199
5200
5201
5202
5203
5204
5205
5206
5207
5208
5209
5210
5211
5212
5213
5214
5215
5216
5217
5218
5219
5220
5221
5222
5223
5224
5225
5226
5227
5228
5229
5230
5231
5232
5233
5234
5235
5236
5237
5238
5239
5240
5241
5242
5243
5244
5245
5246
5247
5248
5249
5250
5251
5252
5253
5254
5255
5256
5257
5258
5259
5260
5261
5262
5263
5264
5265
5266
5267
5268
5269
5270
5271
5272
5273
5274
5275
5276
5277
5278
5279
5280
5281
5282
5283
5284
5285
5286
5287
5288
5289
5290
5291
5292
5293
5294
5295
5296
5297
5298
5299
5300
5301
5302
5303
5304
5305
5306
5307
5308
5309
5310
5311
5312
5313
5314
5315
5316
5317
5318
5319
5320
5321
5322
5323
5324
5325
5326
5327
5328
5329
5330
5331
5332
5333
5334
5335
5336
5337
5338
5339
5340
5341
5342
5343
5344
5345
5346
5347
5348
5349
5350
5351
5352
5353
5354
5355
5356
5357
5358
5359
5360
5361
5362
5363
5364
5365
5366
5367
5368
5369
5370
5371
5372
5373
5374
5375
5376
5377
5378
5379
5380
5381
5382
5383
5384
5385
5386
5387
5388
5389
5390
5391
5392
5393
5394
5395
5396
5397
5398
5399
5400
5401
5402
5403
5404
5405
5406
5407
5408
5409
5410
5411
5412
5413
5414
5415
5416
5417
5418
5419
5420
5421
5422
5423
5424
5425
5426
5427
5428
5429
5430
5431
5432
5433
5434
5435
5436
5437
5438
5439
5440
5441
5442
5443
5444
5445
5446
5447
5448
5449
5450
5451
5452
5453
5454
5455
5456
5457
5458
5459
5460
5461
5462
5463
5464
5465
5466
5467
5468
5469
5470
5471
5472
5473
5474
5475
5476
5477
5478
5479
5480
5481
5482
5483
5484
5485
5486
5487
5488
5489
5490
5491
5492
5493
5494
5495
5496
5497
5498
5499
5500
5501
5502
5503
5504
5505
5506
5507
5508
5509
5510
5511
5512
5513
5514
5515
5516
5517
5518
5519
5520
5521
5522
5523
5524
5525
5526
5527
5528
5529
5530
5531
5532
5533
5534
5535
5536
5537
5538
5539
5540
5541
5542
5543
5544
5545
5546
5547
5548
5549
5550
5551
5552
5553
5554
5555
5556
5557
5558
5559
5560
5561
5562
5563
5564
5565
5566
5567
5568
5569
5570
5571
5572
5573
5574
5575
5576
5577
5578
5579
5580
5581
5582
5583
5584
5585
5586
5587
5588
5589
5590
5591
5592
5593
5594
5595
5596
5597
5598
5599
5600
5601
5602
5603
5604
5605
5606
5607
5608
5609
5610
5611
5612
5613
5614
5615
5616
5617
5618
5619
5620
5621
5622
5623
5624
5625
5626
5627
5628
5629
5630
5631
5632
5633
5634
5635
5636
5637
5638
5639
5640
5641
5642
5643
5644
5645
5646
5647
5648
5649
5650
5651
5652
5653
5654
5655
5656
5657
5658
5659
5660
5661
5662
5663
5664
5665
5666
5667
5668
5669
5670
5671
5672
5673
5674
5675
5676
5677
5678
5679
5680
5681
5682
5683
5684
5685
5686
5687
5688
5689
5690
5691
5692
5693
5694
5695
5696
5697
5698
5699
5700
5701
5702
5703
5704
5705
5706
5707
5708
5709
5710
5711
5712
5713
5714
5715
5716
5717
5718
5719
5720
5721
5722
5723
5724
5725
5726
5727
5728
5729
5730
5731
5732
5733
5734
5735
5736
5737
5738
5739
5740
5741
5742
5743
5744
5745
5746
5747
5748
5749
5750
5751
5752
5753
5754
5755
5756
5757
5758
5759
5760
5761
5762
5763
5764
5765
5766
5767
5768
5769
5770
5771
5772
5773
5774
5775
5776
5777
5778
5779
5780
5781
5782
5783
5784
5785
5786
5787
5788
5789
5790
5791
5792
5793
5794
5795
5796
5797
5798
5799
5800
5801
5802
5803
5804
5805
5806
5807
5808
5809
5810
5811
5812
5813
5814
5815
5816
5817
5818
5819
5820
5821
5822
5823
5824
5825
5826
5827
5828
5829
5830
5831
5832
5833
5834
5835
5836
5837
5838
5839
5840
5841
5842
5843
5844
5845
5846
5847
5848
5849
5850
5851
5852
5853
5854
5855
5856
5857
5858
5859
5860
5861
5862
5863
5864
5865
5866
5867
5868
5869
5870
5871
5872
5873
5874
5875
5876
5877
5878
5879
5880
5881
5882
5883
5884
5885
5886
5887
5888
5889
5890
5891
5892
5893
5894
5895
5896
5897
5898
5899
5900
5901
5902
5903
5904
5905
5906
5907
5908
5909
5910
5911
5912
5913
5914
5915
5916
5917
5918
5919
5920
5921
5922
5923
5924
5925
5926
5927
5928
5929
5930
5931
5932
5933
5934
5935
5936
5937
5938
5939
5940
5941
5942
5943
5944
5945
5946
5947
5948
5949
5950
5951
5952
5953
5954
5955
5956
5957
5958
5959
5960
5961
5962
5963
5964
5965
5966
5967
5968
5969
5970
5971
5972
5973
5974
5975
5976
5977
5978
5979
5980
5981
5982
5983
5984
5985
5986
5987
5988
5989
5990
5991
5992
5993
5994
5995
5996
5997
5998
5999
6000
6001
6002
6003
6004
6005
6006
6007
6008
6009
6010
6011
6012
6013
6014
6015
6016
6017
6018
6019
6020
6021
6022
6023
6024
6025
6026
6027
6028
6029
6030
6031
6032
6033
6034
6035
6036
6037
6038
6039
6040
6041
6042
6043
6044
6045
6046
6047
6048
6049
6050
6051
6052
6053
6054
6055
6056
6057
6058
6059
6060
6061
6062
6063
6064
6065
6066
6067
6068
6069
6070
6071
6072
6073
6074
6075
6076
6077
6078
6079
6080
6081
6082
6083
6084
6085
6086
6087
6088
6089
6090
6091
6092
6093
6094
6095
6096
6097
6098
6099
6100
6101
6102
6103
6104
6105
6106
6107
6108
6109
6110
6111
6112
6113
6114
6115
6116
6117
6118
6119
6120
6121
6122
6123
6124
6125
6126
6127
6128
6129
6130
6131
6132
6133
6134
6135
6136
6137
6138
6139
6140
6141
6142
6143
6144
6145
6146
6147
6148
6149
6150
6151
6152
6153
6154
6155
6156
6157
6158
6159
6160
6161
6162
6163
6164
6165
6166
6167
6168
6169
6170
6171
6172
6173
6174
6175
6176
6177
6178
6179
6180
6181
6182
6183
6184
6185
6186
6187
6188
6189
6190
6191
6192
6193
6194
6195
6196
6197
6198
6199
6200
6201
6202
6203
6204
6205
6206
6207
6208
6209
6210
6211
6212
6213
6214
6215
6216
6217
6218
6219
6220
6221
6222
6223
6224
6225
6226
6227
6228
6229
6230
6231
6232
6233
6234
6235
6236
6237
6238
6239
6240
6241
6242
6243
6244
6245
6246
6247
6248
6249
6250
6251
6252
6253
6254
6255
6256
6257
6258
6259
6260
6261
6262
6263
6264
6265
6266
6267
6268
6269
6270
6271
6272
6273
6274
6275
6276
6277
6278
6279
6280
6281
6282
6283
6284
6285
6286
6287
6288
6289
6290
6291
6292
6293
6294
6295
6296
6297
6298
6299
6300
6301
6302
6303
6304
6305
6306
6307
6308
6309
6310
6311
6312
6313
6314
6315
6316
6317
6318
6319
6320
6321
6322
6323
6324
6325
6326
6327
6328
6329
6330
6331
6332
6333
6334
6335
6336
6337
6338
6339
6340
6341
6342
6343
6344
6345
6346
6347
6348
6349
6350
6351
6352
6353
6354
6355
6356
6357
6358
6359
6360
6361
6362
6363
6364
6365
6366
6367
6368
6369
6370
6371
6372
6373
6374
6375
6376
6377
6378
6379
6380
6381
6382
6383
6384
6385
6386
6387
6388
6389
6390
6391
6392
6393
6394
6395
6396
6397
6398
6399
6400
6401
6402
6403
6404
6405
6406
6407
6408
6409
6410
6411
6412
6413
6414
6415
6416
6417
6418
6419
6420
6421
6422
6423
6424
6425
6426
6427
6428
6429
6430
6431
6432
6433
6434
6435
6436
6437
6438
6439
6440
6441
6442
6443
6444
6445
6446
6447
6448
6449
6450
6451
6452
6453
6454
6455
6456
6457
6458
6459
6460
6461
6462
6463
6464
6465
6466
6467
6468
6469
6470
6471
6472
6473
6474
6475
6476
6477
6478
6479
6480
6481
6482
6483
6484
6485
6486
6487
6488
6489
6490
6491
6492
6493
6494
6495
6496
6497
6498
6499
6500
6501
6502
6503
6504
6505
6506
6507
6508
6509
6510
6511
6512
6513
6514
6515
6516
6517
6518
6519
6520
6521
6522
6523
6524
6525
6526
6527
6528
6529
6530
6531
6532
6533
6534
6535
6536
6537
6538
6539
6540
6541
6542
6543
6544
6545
6546
6547
6548
6549
6550
6551
6552
6553
6554
6555
6556
6557
6558
6559
6560
6561
6562
6563
6564
6565
6566
6567
6568
6569
6570
6571
6572
6573
6574
6575
6576
6577
6578
6579
6580
6581
6582
6583
6584
6585
6586
6587
6588
6589
6590
6591
6592
6593
6594
6595
6596
6597
6598
6599
6600
6601
6602
6603
6604
6605
6606
6607
6608
6609
6610
6611
6612
6613
6614
6615
6616
6617
6618
6619
6620
6621
6622
6623
6624
6625
6626
6627
6628
6629
6630
6631
6632
6633
6634
6635
6636
6637
6638
6639
6640
6641
6642
6643
6644
6645
6646
6647
6648
6649
6650
6651
6652
6653
6654
6655
6656
6657
6658
6659
6660
6661
6662
6663
6664
6665
6666
6667
6668
6669
6670
6671
6672
6673
6674
6675
6676
6677
6678
6679
6680
6681
6682
6683
6684
6685
6686
6687
6688
6689
6690
6691
6692
6693
6694
6695
6696
6697
6698
6699
6700
6701
6702
6703
6704
6705
6706
6707
6708
6709
6710
6711
6712
6713
6714
6715
6716
6717
6718
6719
6720
6721
6722
6723
6724
6725
6726
6727
6728
6729
6730
6731
6732
6733
6734
6735
6736
6737
6738
6739
6740
6741
6742
6743
6744
6745
6746
6747
6748
6749
6750
6751
6752
6753
6754
6755
6756
6757
6758
6759
6760
6761
6762
6763
6764
6765
6766
6767
6768
6769
6770
6771
6772
6773
6774
6775
6776
6777
6778
6779
6780
6781
6782
6783
6784
6785
6786
6787
6788
6789
6790
6791
6792
6793
6794
6795
6796
6797
6798
6799
6800
6801
6802
6803
6804
6805
6806
6807
6808
6809
6810
6811
6812
6813
6814
6815
6816
6817
6818
6819
6820
6821
6822
6823
6824
6825
6826
6827
6828
6829
6830
6831
6832
6833
6834
6835
6836
6837
6838
6839
6840
6841
6842
6843
6844
6845
6846
6847
6848
6849
6850
6851
6852
6853
6854
6855
6856
6857
6858
6859
6860
6861
6862
6863
6864
6865
6866
6867
6868
6869
6870
6871
6872
6873
6874
6875
6876
6877
6878
6879
6880
6881
6882
6883
6884
6885
6886
6887
6888
6889
6890
6891
6892
6893
6894
6895
6896
6897
6898
6899
6900
6901
6902
6903
6904
6905
6906
6907
6908
6909
6910
6911
6912
6913
6914
6915
6916
6917
6918
6919
6920
6921
6922
6923
6924
6925
6926
6927
6928
6929
6930
6931
6932
6933
6934
6935
6936
6937
6938
6939
6940
6941
6942
6943
6944
6945
6946
6947
6948
6949
6950
6951
6952
6953
6954
6955
6956
6957
6958
6959
6960
6961
6962
6963
6964
6965
6966
6967
6968
6969
6970
6971
6972
6973
6974
6975
6976
6977
6978
6979
6980
6981
6982
6983
6984
6985
6986
6987
6988
6989
6990
6991
6992
6993
6994
6995
6996
6997
6998
6999
7000
7001
7002
7003
7004
7005
7006
7007
7008
7009
7010
7011
7012
7013
7014
7015
7016
7017
7018
7019
7020
7021
7022
7023
7024
7025
7026
7027
7028
7029
7030
7031
7032
7033
7034
7035
7036
7037
7038
7039
7040
7041
7042
7043
7044
7045
7046
7047
7048
7049
7050
7051
7052
7053
7054
7055
7056
7057
7058
7059
7060
7061
7062
7063
7064
7065
7066
7067
7068
7069
7070
7071
7072
7073
7074
7075
7076
7077
7078
7079
7080
7081
7082
7083
7084
7085
7086
7087
7088
7089
7090
7091
7092
7093
7094
7095
7096
7097
7098
7099
7100
7101
7102
7103
7104
7105
7106
7107
7108
7109
7110
7111
7112
7113
7114
7115
7116
7117
7118
7119
7120
7121
7122
7123
7124
7125
7126
7127
7128
7129
7130
7131
7132
7133
7134
7135
7136
7137
7138
7139
7140
7141
7142
7143
7144
7145
7146
7147
7148
7149
7150
7151
7152
7153
7154
7155
7156
7157
7158
7159
7160
7161
7162
7163
7164
7165
7166
7167
7168
7169
7170
7171
7172
7173
7174
7175
7176
7177
7178
7179
7180
7181
7182
7183
7184
7185
7186
7187
7188
7189
7190
7191
7192
7193
7194
7195
7196
7197
7198
7199
7200
7201
7202
7203
7204
7205
7206
7207
7208
7209
7210
7211
7212
7213
7214
7215
7216
7217
7218
7219
7220
7221
7222
7223
7224
7225
7226
7227
7228
7229
7230
7231
7232
7233
7234
7235
7236
7237
7238
7239
7240
7241
7242
7243
7244
7245
7246
7247
7248
7249
7250
7251
7252
7253
7254
7255
7256
7257
7258
7259
7260
7261
7262
7263
7264
7265
7266
7267
7268
7269
7270
7271
7272
7273
7274
7275
7276
7277
7278
7279
7280
7281
7282
7283
7284
7285
7286
7287
7288
7289
7290
7291
7292
7293
7294
7295
7296
7297
7298
7299
7300
7301
7302
7303
7304
7305
7306
7307
7308
7309
7310
7311
7312
7313
7314
7315
7316
7317
7318
7319
7320
7321
7322
7323
7324
7325
7326
7327
7328
7329
7330
7331
7332
7333
7334
7335
7336
7337
7338
7339
7340
7341
7342
7343
7344
7345
7346
7347
7348
7349
7350
7351
7352
7353
7354
7355
7356
7357
7358
7359
7360
7361
7362
7363
7364
7365
7366
7367
7368
7369
7370
7371
7372
7373
7374
7375
7376
7377
7378
7379
7380
7381
7382
7383
7384
7385
7386
7387
7388
7389
7390
7391
7392
7393
7394
7395
7396
7397
7398
7399
7400
7401
7402
7403
7404
7405
7406
7407
7408
7409
7410
7411
7412
7413
7414
7415
7416
7417
7418
7419
7420
7421
7422
7423
7424
7425
7426
7427
7428
7429
7430
7431
7432
7433
7434
7435
7436
7437
7438
7439
7440
7441
7442
7443
7444
7445
7446
7447
7448
7449
7450
7451
7452
7453
7454
7455
7456
7457
7458
7459
7460
7461
7462
7463
7464
7465
7466
7467
7468
7469
7470
7471
7472
7473
7474
7475
7476
7477
7478
7479
7480
7481
7482
7483
7484
7485
7486
7487
7488
7489
7490
7491
7492
7493
7494
7495
7496
7497
7498
7499
7500
7501
7502
7503
7504
7505
7506
7507
7508
7509
7510
7511
7512
7513
7514
7515
7516
7517
7518
7519
7520
7521
7522
7523
7524
7525
7526
7527
7528
7529
7530
7531
7532
7533
7534
7535
7536
7537
7538
7539
7540
7541
7542
7543
7544
7545
7546
7547
7548
7549
7550
7551
7552
7553
7554
7555
7556
7557
7558
7559
7560
7561
7562
7563
7564
7565
7566
7567
7568
7569
7570
7571
7572
7573
7574
7575
7576
7577
7578
7579
7580
7581
7582
7583
7584
7585
7586
7587
7588
7589
7590
7591
7592
7593
7594
7595
7596
7597
7598
7599
7600
7601
7602
7603
7604
7605
7606
7607
7608
7609
7610
7611
7612
7613
7614
7615
7616
7617
7618
7619
7620
7621
7622
7623
7624
7625
7626
7627
7628
7629
7630
7631
7632
7633
7634
7635
7636
7637
7638
7639
7640
7641
7642
7643
7644
7645
7646
7647
7648
7649
7650
7651
7652
7653
7654
7655
7656
7657
7658
7659
7660
7661
7662
7663
7664
7665
7666
7667
7668
7669
7670
7671
7672
7673
7674
7675
7676
7677
7678
7679
7680
7681
7682
7683
7684
7685
7686
7687
7688
7689
7690
7691
7692
7693
7694
7695
7696
7697
7698
7699
7700
7701
7702
7703
7704
7705
7706
7707
7708
7709
7710
7711
7712
7713
7714
7715
7716
7717
7718
7719
7720
7721
7722
7723
7724
7725
7726
7727
7728
7729
7730
7731
7732
7733
7734
7735
7736
7737
7738
7739
7740
7741
7742
7743
7744
7745
7746
7747
7748
7749
7750
7751
7752
7753
7754
7755
7756
7757
7758
7759
7760
7761
7762
7763
7764
7765
7766
7767
7768
7769
7770
7771
7772
7773
7774
7775
7776
7777
7778
7779
7780
7781
7782
7783
7784
7785
7786
7787
7788
7789
7790
7791
7792
7793
7794
7795
7796
7797
7798
7799
7800
7801
7802
7803
7804
7805
7806
7807
7808
7809
7810
7811
7812
7813
7814
7815
7816
7817
7818
7819
7820
7821
7822
7823
7824
7825
7826
7827
7828
7829
7830
7831
7832
7833
7834
7835
7836
7837
7838
7839
7840
7841
7842
7843
7844
7845
7846
7847
7848
7849
7850
7851
7852
7853
7854
7855
7856
7857
7858
7859
7860
7861
7862
7863
7864
7865
7866
7867
7868
7869
7870
7871
7872
7873
7874
7875
7876
7877
7878
7879
7880
7881
7882
7883
7884
7885
7886
7887
7888
7889
7890
7891
7892
7893
7894
7895
7896
7897
7898
7899
7900
7901
7902
7903
7904
7905
7906
7907
7908
7909
7910
7911
7912
7913
7914
7915
7916
7917
7918
7919
7920
7921
7922
7923
7924
7925
7926
7927
7928
7929
7930
7931
7932
7933
7934
7935
7936
7937
7938
7939
7940
7941
7942
7943
7944
7945
7946
7947
7948
7949
7950
7951
7952
7953
7954
7955
7956
7957
7958
7959
7960
7961
7962
7963
7964
7965
7966
7967
7968
7969
7970
7971
7972
7973
7974
7975
7976
7977
7978
7979
7980
7981
7982
7983
7984
7985
7986
7987
7988
7989
7990
7991
7992
7993
7994
7995
7996
7997
7998
7999
8000
8001
8002
8003
8004
8005
8006
8007
8008
8009
8010
8011
8012
8013
8014
8015
8016
8017
8018
8019
8020
8021
8022
8023
8024
8025
8026
8027
8028
8029
8030
8031
8032
8033
8034
8035
8036
8037
8038
8039
8040
8041
8042
8043
8044
8045
8046
8047
8048
8049
8050
8051
8052
8053
8054
8055
8056
8057
8058
8059
8060
8061
8062
8063
8064
8065
8066
8067
8068
8069
8070
8071
8072
8073
8074
8075
8076
8077
8078
8079
8080
8081
8082
8083
8084
8085
8086
8087
8088
8089
8090
8091
8092
8093
8094
8095
8096
8097
8098
8099
8100
8101
8102
8103
8104
8105
8106
8107
8108
8109
8110
8111
8112
8113
8114
8115
8116
8117
8118
8119
8120
8121
8122
8123
8124
8125
8126
8127
8128
8129
8130
8131
8132
8133
8134
8135
8136
8137
8138
8139
8140
8141
8142
8143
8144
8145
8146
8147
8148
8149
8150
8151
8152
8153
8154
8155
8156
8157
8158
8159
8160
8161
8162
8163
8164
8165
8166
8167
8168
8169
8170
8171
8172
8173
8174
8175
8176
8177
8178
8179
8180
8181
8182
8183
8184
8185
8186
8187
8188
8189
8190
8191
8192
8193
8194
8195
8196
8197
8198
8199
8200
8201
8202
8203
8204
8205
8206
8207
8208
8209
8210
8211
8212
8213
8214
8215
8216
8217
8218
8219
8220
8221
8222
8223
8224
8225
8226
8227
8228
8229
8230
8231
8232
8233
8234
8235
8236
8237
8238
8239
8240
8241
8242
8243
8244
8245
8246
8247
8248
8249
8250
8251
8252
8253
8254
8255
8256
8257
8258
8259
8260
8261
8262
8263
8264
8265
8266
8267
8268
8269
8270
8271
8272
8273
8274
8275
8276
8277
8278
8279
8280
8281
8282
8283
8284
8285
8286
8287
8288
8289
8290
8291
8292
8293
8294
8295
8296
8297
8298
8299
8300
8301
8302
8303
8304
8305
8306
8307
8308
8309
8310
8311
8312
8313
8314
8315
8316
8317
8318
8319
8320
8321
8322
8323
8324
8325
8326
8327
8328
8329
8330
8331
8332
8333
8334
8335
8336
8337
8338
8339
8340
8341
8342
8343
8344
8345
8346
8347
8348
8349
8350
8351
8352
8353
8354
8355
8356
8357
8358
8359
8360
8361
8362
8363
8364
8365
8366
8367
8368
8369
8370
8371
8372
8373
8374
8375
8376
8377
8378
8379
8380
8381
8382
8383
8384
8385
8386
8387
8388
8389
8390
8391
8392
8393
8394
8395
8396
8397
8398
8399
8400
8401
8402
8403
8404
8405
8406
8407
8408
8409
8410
8411
8412
8413
8414
8415
8416
8417
8418
8419
8420
8421
8422
8423
8424
8425
8426
8427
8428
8429
8430
8431
8432
8433
8434
8435
8436
8437
8438
8439
8440
8441
8442
8443
8444
8445
8446
8447
8448
8449
8450
8451
8452
8453
8454
8455
8456
8457
8458
8459
8460
8461
8462
8463
8464
8465
8466
8467
8468
8469
8470
8471
8472
8473
8474
8475
8476
8477
8478
8479
8480
8481
8482
8483
8484
8485
8486
8487
8488
8489
8490
8491
8492
8493
8494
8495
8496
8497
8498
8499
8500
8501
8502
8503
8504
8505
8506
8507
8508
8509
8510
8511
8512
8513
8514
8515
8516
8517
8518
8519
8520
8521
8522
8523
8524
8525
8526
8527
8528
8529
8530
8531
8532
8533
8534
8535
8536
8537
8538
8539
8540
8541
8542
8543
8544
8545
8546
8547
8548
8549
8550
8551
8552
8553
8554
8555
8556
8557
8558
8559
8560
8561
8562
8563
8564
8565
8566
8567
8568
8569
8570
8571
8572
8573
8574
8575
8576
8577
8578
8579
8580
8581
8582
8583
8584
8585
8586
8587
8588
8589
8590
8591
8592
8593
8594
8595
8596
8597
8598
8599
8600
8601
8602
8603
8604
8605
8606
8607
8608
8609
8610
8611
8612
8613
8614
8615
8616
8617
8618
8619
8620
8621
8622
8623
8624
8625
8626
8627
8628
8629
8630
8631
8632
8633
8634
8635
8636
8637
8638
8639
8640
8641
8642
8643
8644
8645
8646
8647
8648
8649
8650
8651
8652
8653
8654
8655
8656
8657
8658
8659
8660
8661
8662
8663
8664
8665
8666
8667
8668
8669
8670
8671
8672
8673
8674
8675
8676
8677
8678
8679
8680
8681
8682
8683
8684
8685
8686
8687
8688
8689
8690
8691
8692
8693
8694
8695
8696
8697
8698
8699
8700
8701
8702
8703
8704
8705
8706
8707
8708
8709
8710
8711
8712
8713
8714
8715
8716
8717
8718
8719
8720
8721
8722
8723
8724
8725
8726
8727
8728
8729
8730
8731
8732
8733
8734
8735
8736
8737
8738
8739
8740
8741
8742
8743
8744
8745
8746
8747
8748
8749
8750
8751
8752
8753
8754
8755
8756
8757
8758
8759
8760
8761
8762
8763
8764
8765
8766
8767
8768
8769
8770
8771
8772
8773
8774
8775
8776
8777
8778
8779
8780
8781
8782
8783
8784
8785
8786
8787
8788
8789
8790
8791
8792
8793
8794
8795
8796
8797
8798
8799
8800
8801
8802
8803
8804
8805
8806
8807
8808
8809
8810
8811
8812
8813
8814
8815
8816
8817
8818
8819
8820
8821
8822
8823
8824
8825
8826
8827
8828
8829
8830
8831
8832
8833
8834
8835
8836
8837
8838
8839
8840
8841
8842
8843
8844
8845
8846
8847
8848
8849
8850
8851
8852
8853
8854
8855
8856
8857
8858
8859
8860
8861
8862
8863
8864
8865
8866
8867
8868
8869
8870
8871
8872
8873
8874
8875
8876
8877
8878
8879
8880
8881
8882
8883
8884
8885
8886
8887
8888
8889
8890
8891
8892
8893
8894
8895
8896
8897
8898
8899
8900
8901
8902
8903
8904
8905
8906
8907
8908
8909
8910
8911
8912
8913
8914
8915
8916
8917
8918
8919
8920
8921
8922
8923
8924
8925
8926
8927
8928
8929
8930
8931
8932
8933
8934
8935
8936
8937
8938
8939
8940
8941
8942
8943
8944
8945
8946
8947
8948
8949
8950
8951
8952
8953
8954
8955
8956
8957
8958
8959
8960
8961
8962
8963
8964
8965
8966
8967
8968
8969
8970
8971
8972
8973
8974
8975
8976
8977
8978
8979
8980
8981
8982
8983
8984
8985
8986
8987
8988
8989
8990
8991
8992
8993
8994
8995
8996
8997
8998
8999
9000
9001
9002
9003
9004
9005
9006
9007
9008
9009
9010
9011
9012
9013
9014
9015
9016
9017
9018
9019
9020
9021
9022
9023
9024
9025
9026
9027
9028
9029
9030
9031
9032
9033
9034
9035
9036
9037
9038
9039
9040
9041
9042
9043
9044
9045
9046
9047
9048
9049
9050
9051
9052
9053
9054
9055
9056
9057
9058
9059
9060
9061
9062
9063
9064
9065
9066
9067
9068
9069
9070
9071
9072
9073
9074
9075
9076
9077
9078
9079
9080
9081
9082
9083
9084
9085
9086
9087
9088
9089
9090
9091
9092
9093
9094
9095
9096
9097
9098
9099
9100
9101
9102
9103
9104
9105
9106
9107
9108
9109
9110
9111
9112
9113
9114
9115
9116
9117
9118
9119
9120
9121
9122
9123
9124
9125
9126
9127
9128
9129
9130
9131
9132
9133
9134
9135
9136
9137
9138
9139
9140
9141
9142
9143
9144
9145
9146
9147
9148
9149
9150
9151
9152
9153
9154
9155
9156
9157
9158
9159
9160
9161
9162
9163
9164
9165
9166
9167
9168
9169
9170
9171
9172
9173
9174
9175
9176
9177
9178
9179
9180
9181
9182
9183
9184
9185
9186
9187
9188
9189
9190
9191
9192
9193
9194
9195
9196
9197
9198
9199
9200
9201
9202
9203
9204
9205
9206
9207
9208
9209
9210
9211
9212
9213
9214
9215
9216
9217
9218
9219
9220
9221
9222
9223
9224
9225
9226
9227
9228
9229
9230
9231
9232
9233
9234
9235
9236
9237
9238
9239
9240
9241
9242
9243
9244
9245
9246
9247
9248
9249
9250
9251
9252
9253
9254
9255
9256
9257
9258
9259
9260
9261
9262
9263
9264
9265
9266
9267
9268
9269
9270
9271
9272
9273
9274
9275
9276
9277
9278
9279
9280
9281
9282
9283
9284
9285
9286
9287
9288
9289
9290
9291
9292
9293
9294
9295
9296
9297
9298
9299
9300
9301
9302
9303
9304
9305
9306
9307
9308
9309
9310
9311
9312
9313
9314
9315
9316
9317
9318
9319
9320
9321
9322
9323
9324
9325
9326
9327
9328
9329
9330
9331
9332
9333
9334
9335
9336
9337
9338
9339
9340
9341
9342
9343
9344
9345
9346
9347
9348
9349
9350
9351
9352
9353
9354
9355
9356
9357
9358
9359
9360
9361
9362
9363
9364
9365
9366
9367
9368
9369
9370
9371
9372
9373
9374
9375
9376
9377
9378
9379
9380
9381
9382
9383
9384
9385
9386
9387
9388
9389
9390
9391
9392
9393
9394
9395
9396
9397
9398
9399
9400
9401
9402
9403
9404
9405
9406
9407
9408
9409
9410
9411
9412
9413
9414
9415
9416
9417
9418
9419
9420
9421
9422
9423
9424
9425
9426
9427
9428
9429
9430
9431
9432
9433
9434
9435
9436
9437
9438
9439
9440
9441
9442
9443
9444
9445
9446
9447
9448
9449
9450
9451
9452
9453
9454
9455
9456
9457
9458
9459
9460
9461
9462
9463
9464
9465
9466
9467
9468
9469
9470
9471
9472
9473
9474
9475
9476
9477
9478
9479
9480
9481
9482
9483
9484
9485
9486
9487
9488
9489
9490
9491
9492
9493
9494
9495
9496
9497
9498
9499
9500
9501
9502
9503
9504
9505
9506
9507
9508
9509
9510
9511
9512
9513
9514
9515
9516
9517
9518
9519
9520
9521
9522
9523
9524
9525
9526
9527
9528
9529
9530
9531
9532
9533
9534
9535
9536
9537
9538
9539
9540
9541
9542
9543
9544
9545
9546
9547
9548
9549
9550
9551
9552
9553
9554
9555
9556
9557
9558
9559
9560
9561
9562
9563
9564
9565
9566
9567
9568
9569
9570
9571
9572
9573
9574
9575
9576
9577
9578
9579
9580
9581
9582
9583
9584
9585
9586
9587
9588
9589
9590
9591
9592
9593
9594
9595
9596
9597
9598
9599
9600
9601
9602
9603
9604
9605
9606
9607
9608
9609
9610
9611
9612
9613
9614
9615
9616
9617
9618
9619
9620
9621
9622
9623
9624
9625
9626
9627
9628
9629
9630
9631
9632
9633
9634
9635
9636
9637
9638
9639
9640
9641
9642
9643
9644
9645
9646
9647
9648
9649
9650
9651
9652
9653
9654
9655
9656
9657
9658
9659
9660
9661
9662
9663
9664
9665
9666
9667
9668
9669
9670
9671
9672
9673
9674
9675
9676
9677
9678
9679
9680
9681
9682
9683
9684
9685
9686
9687
9688
9689
9690
9691
9692
9693
9694
9695
9696
9697
9698
9699
9700
9701
9702
9703
9704
9705
9706
9707
9708
9709
9710
9711
9712
9713
9714
9715
9716
9717
9718
9719
9720
9721
9722
9723
9724
9725
9726
9727
9728
9729
9730
9731
9732
9733
9734
9735
9736
9737
9738
9739
9740
9741
9742
9743
9744
9745
9746
9747
9748
9749
9750
9751
9752
9753
9754
9755
9756
9757
9758
9759
9760
9761
9762
9763
9764
9765
9766
9767
9768
9769
9770
9771
9772
9773
9774
9775
9776
9777
9778
9779
9780
9781
9782
9783
9784
9785
9786
9787
9788
9789
9790
9791
9792
9793
9794
9795
9796
9797
9798
9799
9800
9801
9802
9803
9804
9805
9806
9807
9808
9809
9810
9811
9812
9813
9814
9815
9816
9817
9818
9819
9820
9821
9822
9823
9824
9825
9826
9827
9828
9829
9830
9831
9832
9833
9834
9835
9836
9837
9838
9839
9840
9841
9842
9843
9844
9845
9846
9847
9848
9849
9850
9851
9852
9853
9854
9855
9856
9857
9858
9859
9860
9861
9862
9863
9864
9865
9866
9867
9868
9869
9870
9871
9872
9873
9874
9875
9876
9877
9878
9879
9880
9881
9882
9883
9884
9885
9886
9887
9888
9889
9890
9891
9892
9893
9894
9895
9896
9897
9898
9899
9900
9901
9902
9903
9904
9905
9906
9907
9908
9909
9910
9911
9912
9913
9914
9915
9916
9917
9918
9919
9920
9921
9922
9923
9924
9925
9926
9927
9928
9929
9930
9931
9932
9933
9934
9935
9936
9937
9938
9939
9940
9941
9942
9943
9944
9945
9946
9947
9948
9949
9950
9951
9952
9953
9954
9955
9956
9957
9958
9959
9960
9961
9962
9963
9964
9965
9966
9967
9968
9969
9970
9971
9972
9973
9974
9975
9976
9977
9978
9979
9980
9981
9982
9983
9984
9985
9986
9987
9988
9989
9990
9991
9992
9993
9994
9995
9996
9997
9998
9999
10000
10001
10002
10003
10004
10005
10006
10007
10008
10009
10010
10011
10012
10013
10014
10015
10016
10017
10018
10019
10020
10021
10022
10023
10024
10025
10026
10027
10028
10029
10030
10031
10032
10033
10034
10035
10036
10037
10038
10039
10040
10041
10042
10043
10044
10045
10046
10047
10048
10049
10050
10051
10052
10053
10054
10055
10056
10057
10058
10059
10060
10061
10062
10063
10064
10065
10066
10067
10068
10069
10070
10071
10072
10073
10074
10075
10076
10077
10078
10079
10080
10081
10082
10083
10084
10085
10086
10087
10088
10089
10090
10091
10092
10093
10094
10095
10096
10097
10098
10099
10100
10101
10102
10103
10104
10105
10106
10107
10108
10109
10110
10111
10112
10113
10114
10115
10116
10117
10118
10119
10120
10121
10122
10123
10124
10125
10126
10127
10128
10129
10130
10131
10132
10133
10134
10135
10136
10137
10138
10139
10140
10141
10142
10143
10144
10145
10146
10147
10148
10149
10150
10151
10152
10153
10154
10155
10156
10157
10158
10159
10160
10161
10162
10163
10164
10165
10166
10167
10168
10169
10170
10171
10172
10173
10174
10175
10176
10177
10178
10179
10180
10181
10182
10183
10184
10185
10186
10187
10188
10189
10190
10191
10192
10193
10194
10195
10196
10197
10198
10199
10200
10201
10202
10203
10204
10205
10206
10207
10208
10209
10210
10211
10212
10213
10214
10215
10216
10217
10218
10219
10220
10221
10222
10223
10224
10225
10226
10227
10228
10229
10230
10231
10232
10233
10234
10235
10236
10237
10238
10239
10240
10241
10242
10243
10244
10245
10246
10247
10248
10249
10250
10251
10252
10253
10254
10255
10256
10257
10258
10259
10260
10261
10262
10263
10264
10265
10266
10267
10268
10269
10270
10271
10272
10273
10274
10275
10276
10277
10278
10279
10280
10281
10282
10283
10284
10285
10286
10287
10288
10289
10290
10291
10292
10293
10294
10295
10296
10297
10298
10299
10300
10301
10302
10303
10304
10305
10306
10307
10308
10309
10310
10311
10312
10313
10314
10315
10316
10317
10318
10319
10320
10321
10322
10323
10324
10325
10326
10327
10328
10329
10330
10331
10332
10333
10334
10335
10336
10337
10338
10339
10340
10341
10342
10343
10344
10345
10346
10347
10348
10349
10350
10351
10352
10353
10354
10355
10356
10357
10358
10359
10360
10361
10362
10363
10364
10365
10366
10367
10368
10369
10370
10371
10372
10373
10374
10375
10376
10377
10378
10379
10380
10381
10382
10383
10384
10385
10386
10387
10388
10389
10390
10391
10392
10393
10394
10395
10396
10397
10398
10399
10400
10401
10402
10403
10404
10405
10406
10407
10408
10409
10410
10411
10412
10413
10414
10415
10416
10417
10418
10419
10420
10421
10422
10423
10424
10425
10426
10427
10428
10429
10430
10431
10432
10433
10434
10435
10436
10437
10438
10439
10440
10441
10442
10443
10444
10445
10446
10447
10448
10449
10450
10451
10452
10453
10454
10455
10456
10457
10458
10459
10460
10461
10462
10463
10464
10465
10466
10467
10468
10469
10470
10471
10472
10473
10474
10475
10476
10477
10478
10479
10480
10481
10482
10483
10484
10485
10486
10487
10488
10489
10490
10491
10492
10493
10494
10495
10496
10497
10498
10499
10500
10501
10502
10503
10504
10505
10506
10507
10508
10509
10510
10511
10512
10513
10514
10515
10516
10517
10518
10519
10520
10521
10522
10523
10524
10525
10526
10527
10528
10529
10530
10531
10532
10533
10534
10535
10536
10537
10538
10539
10540
10541
10542
10543
10544
10545
10546
10547
10548
10549
10550
10551
10552
10553
10554
10555
10556
10557
10558
10559
10560
10561
10562
10563
10564
10565
10566
10567
10568
10569
10570
10571
10572
10573
10574
10575
10576
10577
10578
10579
10580
10581
10582
10583
10584
10585
10586
10587
10588
10589
10590
10591
10592
10593
10594
10595
10596
10597
10598
10599
10600
10601
10602
10603
10604
10605
10606
10607
10608
10609
10610
10611
10612
10613
10614
10615
10616
10617
10618
10619
10620
10621
10622
10623
10624
10625
10626
10627
10628
10629
10630
10631
10632
10633
10634
10635
10636
10637
10638
10639
10640
10641
10642
10643
10644
10645
10646
10647
10648
10649
10650
10651
10652
10653
10654
10655
10656
10657
10658
10659
10660
10661
10662
10663
10664
10665
10666
10667
10668
10669
10670
10671
10672
10673
10674
10675
10676
10677
10678
10679
10680
10681
10682
10683
10684
10685
10686
10687
10688
10689
10690
10691
10692
10693
10694
10695
10696
10697
10698
10699
10700
10701
10702
10703
10704
10705
10706
10707
10708
10709
10710
10711
10712
10713
10714
10715
10716
10717
10718
10719
10720
10721
10722
10723
10724
10725
10726
10727
10728
10729
10730
10731
10732
10733
10734
10735
10736
10737
10738
10739
10740
10741
10742
10743
10744
10745
10746
10747
10748
10749
10750
10751
10752
10753
10754
10755
10756
10757
10758
10759
10760
10761
10762
10763
10764
10765
10766
10767
10768
10769
10770
10771
10772
10773
10774
10775
10776
10777
10778
10779
10780
10781
10782
10783
10784
10785
10786
10787
10788
10789
10790
10791
10792
10793
10794
10795
10796
10797
10798
10799
10800
10801
10802
10803
10804
10805
10806
10807
10808
10809
10810
10811
10812
10813
10814
10815
10816
10817
10818
10819
10820
10821
10822
10823
10824
10825
10826
10827
10828
10829
10830
10831
10832
10833
10834
10835
10836
10837
10838
10839
10840
10841
10842
10843
10844
10845
10846
10847
10848
10849
10850
10851
10852
10853
10854
10855
10856
10857
10858
10859
10860
10861
10862
10863
10864
10865
10866
10867
10868
10869
10870
10871
10872
10873
10874
10875
10876
10877
10878
10879
10880
10881
10882
10883
10884
10885
10886
10887
10888
10889
10890
10891
10892
10893
10894
10895
10896
10897
10898
10899
10900
10901
10902
10903
10904
10905
10906
10907
10908
10909
10910
10911
10912
10913
10914
10915
10916
10917
10918
10919
10920
10921
10922
10923
10924
10925
10926
10927
10928
10929
10930
10931
10932
10933
10934
10935
10936
10937
10938
10939
10940
10941
10942
10943
10944
10945
10946
10947
10948
10949
10950
10951
10952
10953
10954
10955
10956
10957
10958
10959
10960
10961
10962
10963
10964
10965
10966
10967
10968
10969
10970
10971
10972
10973
10974
10975
10976
10977
10978
10979
10980
10981
10982
10983
10984
10985
10986
10987
10988
10989
10990
10991
10992
10993
10994
10995
10996
10997
10998
10999
11000
11001
11002
11003
11004
11005
11006
11007
11008
11009
11010
11011
11012
11013
11014
11015
11016
11017
11018
11019
11020
11021
11022
11023
11024
11025
11026
11027
11028
11029
11030
11031
11032
11033
11034
11035
11036
11037
11038
11039
11040
11041
11042
11043
11044
11045
11046
11047
11048
11049
11050
11051
11052
11053
11054
11055
11056
11057
11058
11059
11060
11061
11062
11063
11064
11065
11066
11067
11068
11069
11070
11071
11072
11073
11074
11075
11076
11077
11078
11079
11080
11081
11082
11083
11084
11085
11086
11087
11088
11089
11090
11091
11092
11093
11094
11095
11096
11097
11098
11099
11100
11101
11102
11103
11104
11105
11106
11107
11108
11109
11110
11111
11112
11113
11114
11115
11116
11117
11118
11119
11120
11121
11122
11123
11124
11125
11126
11127
11128
11129
11130
11131
11132
11133
11134
11135
11136
11137
11138
11139
11140
11141
11142
11143
11144
11145
11146
11147
11148
11149
11150
11151
11152
11153
11154
11155
11156
11157
11158
11159
11160
11161
11162
11163
11164
11165
11166
11167
11168
11169
11170
11171
11172
11173
11174
11175
11176
11177
11178
11179
11180
11181
11182
11183
11184
11185
11186
11187
11188
11189
11190
11191
11192
11193
11194
11195
11196
11197
11198
11199
11200
11201
11202
11203
11204
11205
11206
11207
11208
11209
11210
11211
11212
11213
11214
11215
11216
11217
11218
11219
11220
11221
11222
11223
11224
11225
11226
11227
11228
11229
11230
11231
11232
11233
11234
11235
11236
11237
11238
11239
11240
11241
11242
11243
11244
11245
11246
11247
11248
11249
11250
11251
11252
11253
11254
11255
11256
11257
11258
11259
11260
11261
11262
11263
11264
11265
11266
11267
11268
11269
11270
11271
11272
11273
11274
11275
11276
11277
11278
11279
11280
11281
11282
11283
11284
11285
11286
11287
11288
11289
11290
11291
11292
11293
11294
11295
11296
11297
11298
11299
11300
11301
11302
11303
11304
11305
11306
11307
11308
11309
11310
11311
11312
11313
11314
11315
11316
11317
11318
11319
11320
11321
11322
11323
11324
11325
11326
11327
11328
11329
11330
11331
11332
11333
11334
11335
11336
11337
11338
11339
11340
11341
11342
11343
11344
11345
11346
11347
11348
11349
11350
11351
11352
11353
11354
11355
11356
11357
11358
11359
11360
11361
11362
11363
11364
11365
11366
11367
11368
11369
11370
11371
11372
11373
11374
11375
11376
11377
11378
11379
11380
11381
11382
11383
11384
11385
11386
11387
11388
11389
11390
11391
11392
11393
11394
11395
11396
11397
11398
11399
11400
11401
11402
11403
11404
11405
11406
11407
11408
11409
11410
11411
11412
11413
11414
11415
11416
11417
11418
11419
11420
11421
11422
11423
11424
11425
11426
11427
11428
11429
11430
11431
11432
11433
11434
11435
11436
11437
11438
11439
11440
11441
11442
11443
11444
11445
11446
11447
11448
11449
11450
11451
11452
11453
11454
11455
11456
11457
11458
11459
11460
11461
11462
11463
11464
11465
11466
11467
11468
11469
11470
11471
11472
11473
11474
11475
11476
11477
11478
11479
11480
11481
11482
11483
11484
11485
11486
11487
11488
11489
11490
11491
11492
11493
11494
11495
11496
11497
11498
11499
11500
11501
11502
11503
11504
11505
11506
11507
11508
11509
11510
11511
11512
11513
11514
11515
11516
11517
11518
11519
11520
11521
11522
11523
11524
11525
11526
11527
11528
11529
11530
11531
11532
11533
11534
11535
11536
11537
11538
11539
11540
11541
11542
11543
11544
11545
11546
11547
11548
11549
11550
11551
11552
11553
11554
11555
11556
11557
11558
11559
11560
11561
11562
11563
11564
11565
11566
11567
11568
11569
11570
11571
11572
11573
11574
11575
11576
11577
11578
11579
11580
11581
11582
11583
11584
11585
11586
11587
11588
11589
11590
11591
11592
11593
11594
11595
11596
11597
11598
11599
11600
11601
11602
11603
11604
11605
11606
11607
11608
11609
11610
11611
11612
11613
11614
11615
11616
11617
11618
11619
11620
11621
11622
11623
11624
11625
11626
11627
11628
11629
11630
11631
11632
11633
11634
11635
11636
11637
11638
11639
11640
11641
11642
11643
11644
11645
11646
11647
11648
11649
11650
11651
11652
11653
11654
11655
11656
11657
11658
11659
11660
11661
11662
11663
11664
11665
11666
11667
11668
11669
11670
11671
11672
11673
11674
11675
11676
11677
11678
11679
11680
11681
11682
11683
11684
11685
11686
11687
11688
11689
11690
11691
11692
11693
11694
11695
11696
11697
11698
11699
11700
11701
11702
11703
11704
11705
11706
11707
11708
11709
11710
11711
11712
11713
11714
11715
11716
11717
11718
11719
11720
11721
11722
11723
11724
11725
11726
11727
11728
11729
11730
11731
11732
11733
11734
11735
11736
11737
11738
11739
11740
11741
11742
11743
11744
11745
11746
11747
11748
11749
11750
11751
11752
11753
11754
11755
11756
11757
11758
11759
11760
11761
11762
11763
11764
11765
11766
11767
11768
11769
11770
11771
11772
11773
11774
11775
11776
11777
11778
11779
11780
11781
11782
11783
11784
11785
11786
11787
11788
11789
11790
11791
11792
11793
11794
11795
11796
11797
11798
11799
11800
11801
11802
11803
11804
11805
11806
11807
11808
11809
11810
11811
11812
11813
11814
11815
11816
11817
11818
11819
11820
11821
11822
11823
11824
11825
11826
11827
11828
11829
11830
11831
11832
11833
11834
11835
11836
11837
11838
11839
11840
11841
11842
11843
11844
11845
11846
11847
11848
11849
11850
11851
11852
11853
11854
11855
11856
11857
11858
11859
11860
11861
11862
11863
11864
11865
11866
11867
11868
11869
11870
11871
11872
11873
11874
11875
11876
11877
11878
11879
11880
11881
11882
11883
11884
11885
11886
11887
11888
11889
11890
11891
11892
11893
11894
11895
11896
11897
11898
11899
11900
11901
11902
11903
11904
11905
11906
11907
11908
11909
11910
11911
11912
11913
11914
11915
11916
11917
11918
11919
11920
11921
11922
11923
11924
11925
11926
11927
11928
11929
11930
11931
11932
11933
11934
11935
11936
11937
11938
11939
11940
11941
11942
11943
11944
11945
11946
11947
11948
11949
11950
11951
11952
11953
11954
11955
11956
11957
11958
11959
11960
11961
11962
11963
11964
11965
11966
11967
11968
11969
11970
11971
11972
11973
11974
11975
11976
11977
11978
11979
11980
11981
11982
11983
11984
11985
11986
11987
11988
11989
11990
11991
11992
11993
11994
11995
11996
11997
11998
11999
12000
12001
12002
12003
12004
12005
12006
12007
12008
12009
12010
12011
12012
12013
12014
12015
12016
12017
12018
12019
12020
12021
12022
12023
12024
12025
12026
12027
12028
12029
12030
12031
12032
12033
12034
12035
12036
12037
12038
12039
12040
12041
12042
12043
12044
12045
12046
12047
12048
12049
12050
12051
12052
12053
12054
12055
12056
12057
12058
12059
12060
12061
12062
12063
12064
12065
12066
12067
12068
12069
12070
12071
12072
12073
12074
12075
12076
12077
12078
12079
12080
12081
12082
12083
12084
12085
12086
12087
12088
12089
12090
12091
12092
12093
12094
12095
12096
12097
12098
12099
12100
12101
12102
12103
12104
12105
12106
12107
12108
12109
12110
12111
12112
12113
12114
12115
12116
12117
12118
12119
12120
12121
12122
12123
12124
12125
12126
12127
12128
12129
12130
12131
12132
12133
12134
12135
12136
12137
12138
12139
12140
12141
12142
12143
12144
12145
12146
12147
12148
12149
12150
12151
12152
12153
12154
12155
12156
12157
12158
12159
12160
12161
12162
12163
12164
12165
12166
12167
12168
12169
12170
12171
12172
12173
12174
12175
12176
12177
12178
12179
12180
12181
12182
12183
12184
12185
12186
12187
12188
12189
12190
12191
12192
12193
12194
12195
12196
12197
12198
12199
12200
12201
12202
12203
12204
12205
12206
12207
12208
12209
12210
12211
12212
12213
12214
12215
12216
12217
12218
12219
12220
12221
12222
12223
12224
12225
12226
12227
12228
12229
12230
12231
12232
12233
12234
12235
12236
12237
12238
12239
12240
12241
12242
12243
12244
12245
12246
12247
12248
12249
12250
12251
12252
12253
12254
12255
12256
12257
12258
12259
12260
12261
12262
12263
12264
12265
12266
12267
12268
12269
12270
12271
12272
12273
12274
12275
12276
12277
12278
12279
12280
12281
12282
12283
12284
12285
12286
12287
12288
12289
12290
12291
12292
12293
12294
12295
12296
12297
12298
12299
12300
12301
12302
12303
12304
12305
12306
12307
12308
12309
12310
12311
12312
12313
12314
12315
12316
12317
12318
12319
12320
12321
12322
12323
12324
12325
12326
12327
12328
12329
12330
12331
12332
12333
12334
12335
12336
12337
12338
12339
12340
12341
12342
12343
12344
12345
12346
12347
12348
12349
12350
12351
12352
12353
12354
12355
12356
12357
12358
12359
12360
12361
12362
12363
12364
12365
12366
12367
12368
12369
12370
12371
12372
12373
12374
12375
12376
12377
12378
12379
12380
12381
12382
12383
12384
12385
12386
12387
12388
12389
12390
12391
12392
12393
12394
12395
12396
12397
12398
12399
12400
12401
12402
12403
12404
12405
12406
12407
12408
12409
12410
12411
12412
12413
12414
12415
12416
12417
12418
12419
12420
12421
12422
12423
12424
12425
12426
12427
12428
12429
12430
12431
12432
12433
12434
12435
12436
12437
12438
12439
12440
12441
12442
12443
12444
12445
12446
12447
12448
12449
12450
12451
12452
12453
12454
12455
12456
12457
12458
12459
12460
12461
12462
12463
12464
12465
12466
12467
12468
12469
12470
12471
12472
12473
12474
12475
12476
12477
12478
12479
12480
12481
12482
12483
12484
12485
12486
12487
12488
12489
12490
12491
12492
12493
12494
12495
12496
12497
12498
12499
12500
12501
12502
12503
12504
12505
12506
12507
12508
12509
12510
12511
12512
12513
12514
12515
12516
12517
12518
12519
12520
12521
12522
12523
12524
12525
12526
12527
12528
12529
12530
12531
12532
12533
12534
12535
12536
12537
12538
12539
12540
12541
12542
12543
12544
12545
12546
12547
12548
12549
12550
12551
12552
12553
12554
12555
12556
12557
12558
12559
12560
12561
12562
12563
12564
12565
12566
12567
12568
12569
12570
12571
12572
12573
12574
12575
12576
12577
12578
12579
12580
12581
12582
12583
12584
12585
12586
12587
12588
12589
12590
12591
12592
12593
12594
12595
12596
12597
12598
12599
12600
12601
12602
12603
12604
12605
12606
12607
12608
12609
12610
12611
12612
12613
12614
12615
12616
12617
12618
12619
12620
12621
12622
12623
12624
12625
12626
12627
12628
12629
12630
12631
12632
12633
12634
12635
12636
12637
12638
12639
12640
12641
12642
12643
12644
12645
12646
12647
12648
12649
12650
12651
12652
12653
12654
12655
12656
12657
12658
12659
12660
12661
12662
12663
12664
12665
12666
12667
12668
12669
12670
12671
12672
12673
12674
12675
12676
12677
12678
12679
12680
12681
12682
12683
12684
12685
12686
12687
12688
12689
12690
12691
12692
12693
12694
12695
12696
12697
12698
12699
12700
12701
12702
12703
12704
12705
12706
12707
12708
12709
12710
12711
12712
12713
12714
12715
12716
12717
12718
12719
12720
12721
12722
12723
12724
12725
12726
12727
12728
12729
12730
12731
12732
12733
12734
12735
12736
12737
12738
12739
12740
12741
12742
12743
12744
12745
12746
12747
12748
12749
12750
12751
12752
12753
12754
12755
12756
12757
12758
12759
12760
12761
12762
12763
12764
12765
12766
12767
12768
12769
12770
12771
12772
12773
12774
12775
12776
12777
12778
12779
12780
12781
12782
12783
12784
12785
12786
12787
12788
12789
12790
12791
12792
12793
12794
12795
12796
12797
12798
12799
12800
12801
12802
12803
12804
12805
12806
12807
12808
12809
12810
12811
12812
12813
12814
12815
12816
12817
12818
12819
12820
12821
12822
12823
12824
12825
12826
12827
12828
12829
12830
12831
12832
12833
12834
12835
12836
12837
12838
12839
12840
12841
12842
12843
12844
12845
12846
12847
12848
12849
12850
12851
12852
12853
12854
12855
12856
12857
12858
12859
12860
12861
12862
12863
12864
12865
12866
12867
12868
12869
12870
12871
12872
12873
12874
12875
12876
12877
12878
12879
12880
12881
12882
12883
12884
12885
12886
12887
12888
12889
12890
12891
12892
12893
12894
12895
12896
12897
12898
12899
12900
12901
12902
12903
12904
12905
12906
12907
12908
12909
12910
12911
12912
12913
12914
12915
12916
12917
12918
12919
12920
12921
12922
12923
12924
12925
12926
12927
12928
12929
12930
12931
12932
12933
12934
12935
12936
12937
12938
12939
12940
12941
12942
12943
12944
12945
12946
12947
12948
12949
12950
12951
12952
12953
12954
12955
12956
12957
12958
12959
12960
12961
12962
12963
12964
12965
12966
12967
12968
12969
12970
12971
12972
12973
12974
12975
12976
12977
12978
12979
12980
12981
12982
12983
12984
12985
12986
12987
12988
12989
12990
12991
12992
12993
12994
12995
12996
12997
12998
12999
13000
13001
13002
13003
13004
13005
13006
13007
13008
13009
13010
13011
13012
13013
13014
13015
13016
13017
13018
13019
13020
13021
13022
13023
13024
13025
13026
13027
13028
13029
13030
13031
13032
13033
13034
13035
13036
13037
13038
13039
13040
13041
13042
13043
13044
13045
13046
13047
13048
13049
13050
13051
13052
13053
13054
13055
13056
13057
13058
13059
13060
13061
13062
13063
13064
13065
13066
13067
13068
13069
13070
13071
13072
13073
13074
13075
13076
13077
13078
13079
13080
13081
13082
13083
13084
13085
13086
13087
13088
13089
13090
13091
13092
13093
13094
13095
13096
13097
13098
13099
13100
13101
13102
13103
13104
13105
13106
13107
13108
13109
13110
13111
13112
13113
13114
13115
13116
13117
13118
13119
13120
13121
13122
13123
13124
13125
13126
13127
13128
13129
13130
13131
13132
13133
13134
13135
13136
13137
13138
13139
13140
13141
13142
13143
13144
13145
13146
13147
13148
13149
13150
13151
13152
13153
13154
13155
13156
13157
13158
13159
13160
13161
13162
13163
13164
13165
13166
13167
13168
13169
13170
13171
13172
13173
13174
13175
13176
13177
13178
13179
13180
13181
13182
13183
13184
13185
13186
13187
13188
13189
13190
13191
13192
13193
13194
13195
13196
13197
13198
13199
13200
13201
13202
13203
13204
13205
13206
13207
13208
13209
13210
13211
13212
13213
13214
13215
13216
13217
13218
13219
13220
13221
13222
13223
13224
13225
13226
13227
13228
13229
13230
13231
13232
13233
13234
13235
13236
13237
13238
13239
13240
13241
13242
13243
13244
13245
13246
13247
13248
13249
13250
13251
13252
13253
13254
13255
13256
13257
13258
13259
13260
13261
13262
13263
13264
13265
13266
13267
13268
13269
13270
13271
13272
13273
13274
13275
13276
13277
13278
13279
13280
13281
13282
13283
13284
13285
13286
13287
13288
13289
13290
13291
13292
13293
13294
13295
13296
13297
13298
13299
13300
13301
13302
13303
13304
13305
13306
13307
13308
13309
13310
13311
13312
13313
13314
13315
13316
13317
13318
13319
13320
13321
13322
13323
13324
13325
13326
13327
13328
13329
13330
13331
13332
13333
13334
13335
13336
13337
13338
13339
13340
13341
13342
13343
13344
13345
13346
13347
13348
13349
13350
13351
13352
13353
13354
13355
13356
13357
13358
13359
13360
13361
13362
13363
13364
13365
13366
13367
13368
13369
13370
13371
13372
13373
13374
13375
13376
13377
13378
13379
13380
13381
13382
13383
13384
13385
13386
13387
13388
13389
13390
13391
13392
13393
13394
13395
13396
13397
13398
13399
13400
13401
13402
13403
13404
13405
13406
13407
13408
13409
13410
13411
13412
13413
13414
13415
13416
13417
13418
13419
13420
13421
13422
13423
13424
13425
13426
13427
13428
13429
13430
13431
13432
13433
13434
13435
13436
13437
13438
13439
13440
13441
13442
13443
13444
13445
13446
13447
13448
13449
13450
13451
13452
13453
13454
13455
13456
13457
13458
13459
13460
13461
13462
13463
13464
13465
13466
13467
13468
13469
13470
13471
13472
13473
13474
13475
13476
13477
13478
13479
13480
13481
13482
13483
13484
13485
13486
13487
13488
13489
13490
13491
13492
13493
13494
13495
13496
13497
13498
13499
13500
13501
13502
13503
13504
13505
13506
13507
13508
13509
13510
13511
13512
13513
13514
13515
13516
13517
13518
13519
13520
13521
13522
13523
13524
13525
13526
13527
13528
13529
13530
13531
13532
13533
13534
13535
13536
13537
13538
13539
13540
13541
13542
13543
13544
13545
13546
13547
13548
13549
13550
13551
13552
13553
13554
13555
13556
13557
13558
13559
13560
13561
13562
13563
13564
13565
13566
13567
13568
13569
13570
13571
13572
13573
13574
13575
13576
13577
13578
13579
13580
13581
13582
13583
13584
13585
13586
13587
13588
13589
13590
13591
13592
13593
13594
13595
13596
13597
13598
13599
13600
13601
13602
13603
13604
13605
13606
13607
13608
13609
13610
13611
13612
13613
13614
13615
13616
13617
13618
13619
13620
13621
13622
13623
13624
13625
13626
13627
13628
13629
13630
13631
13632
13633
13634
13635
13636
13637
13638
13639
13640
13641
13642
13643
13644
13645
13646
13647
13648
13649
13650
13651
13652
13653
13654
13655
13656
13657
13658
13659
13660
13661
13662
13663
13664
13665
13666
13667
13668
13669
13670
13671
13672
13673
13674
13675
13676
13677
13678
13679
13680
13681
13682
13683
13684
13685
13686
13687
13688
13689
13690
13691
13692
13693
13694
13695
13696
13697
13698
13699
13700
13701
13702
13703
13704
13705
13706
13707
13708
13709
13710
13711
13712
13713
13714
13715
13716
13717
13718
13719
13720
13721
13722
13723
13724
13725
13726
13727
13728
13729
13730
13731
13732
13733
13734
13735
13736
13737
13738
13739
13740
13741
13742
13743
13744
13745
13746
13747
13748
13749
13750
13751
13752
13753
13754
13755
13756
13757
13758
13759
13760
13761
13762
13763
13764
13765
13766
13767
13768
13769
13770
13771
13772
13773
13774
13775
13776
13777
13778
13779
13780
13781
13782
13783
13784
13785
13786
13787
13788
13789
13790
13791
13792
13793
13794
13795
13796
13797
13798
13799
13800
13801
13802
13803
13804
13805
13806
13807
13808
13809
13810
13811
13812
13813
13814
13815
13816
13817
13818
13819
13820
13821
13822
13823
13824
13825
13826
13827
13828
13829
13830
13831
13832
13833
13834
13835
13836
13837
13838
13839
13840
13841
13842
13843
13844
13845
13846
13847
13848
13849
13850
13851
13852
13853
13854
13855
13856
13857
13858
13859
13860
13861
13862
13863
13864
13865
13866
13867
13868
13869
13870
13871
13872
13873
13874
13875
13876
13877
13878
13879
13880
13881
13882
13883
13884
13885
13886
13887
13888
13889
13890
13891
13892
13893
13894
13895
13896
13897
13898
13899
13900
13901
13902
13903
13904
13905
13906
13907
13908
13909
13910
13911
13912
13913
13914
13915
13916
13917
13918
13919
13920
13921
13922
13923
13924
13925
13926
13927
13928
13929
13930
13931
13932
13933
13934
13935
13936
13937
13938
13939
13940
13941
13942
13943
13944
13945
13946
13947
13948
13949
13950
13951
13952
13953
13954
13955
13956
13957
13958
13959
13960
13961
13962
13963
13964
13965
13966
13967
13968
13969
13970
13971
13972
13973
13974
13975
13976
13977
13978
13979
13980
13981
13982
13983
13984
13985
13986
13987
13988
13989
13990
13991
13992
13993
13994
13995
13996
13997
13998
13999
14000
14001
14002
14003
14004
14005
14006
14007
14008
14009
14010
14011
14012
14013
14014
14015
14016
14017
14018
14019
14020
14021
14022
14023
14024
14025
14026
14027
14028
14029
14030
14031
14032
14033
14034
14035
14036
14037
14038
14039
14040
14041
14042
14043
14044
14045
14046
14047
14048
14049
14050
14051
14052
14053
14054
14055
14056
14057
14058
14059
14060
14061
14062
14063
14064
14065
14066
14067
14068
14069
14070
14071
14072
14073
14074
14075
14076
14077
14078
14079
14080
14081
14082
14083
14084
14085
14086
14087
14088
14089
14090
14091
14092
14093
14094
14095
14096
14097
14098
14099
14100
14101
14102
14103
14104
14105
14106
14107
14108
14109
14110
14111
14112
14113
14114
14115
14116
14117
14118
14119
14120
14121
14122
14123
14124
14125
14126
14127
14128
14129
14130
14131
14132
14133
14134
14135
14136
14137
14138
14139
14140
14141
14142
14143
14144
14145
14146
14147
14148
14149
14150
14151
14152
14153
14154
14155
14156
14157
14158
14159
14160
14161
14162
14163
14164
14165
14166
14167
14168
14169
14170
14171
14172
14173
14174
14175
14176
14177
14178
14179
14180
14181
14182
14183
14184
14185
14186
14187
14188
14189
14190
14191
14192
14193
14194
14195
14196
14197
14198
14199
14200
14201
14202
14203
14204
14205
14206
14207
14208
14209
14210
14211
14212
14213
14214
14215
14216
14217
14218
14219
14220
14221
14222
14223
14224
14225
14226
14227
14228
14229
14230
14231
14232
14233
14234
14235
14236
14237
14238
14239
14240
14241
14242
14243
14244
14245
14246
14247
14248
14249
14250
14251
14252
14253
14254
14255
14256
14257
14258
14259
14260
14261
14262
14263
14264
14265
14266
14267
14268
14269
14270
14271
14272
14273
14274
14275
14276
14277
14278
14279
14280
14281
14282
14283
14284
14285
14286
14287
14288
14289
14290
14291
14292
14293
14294
14295
14296
14297
14298
14299
14300
14301
14302
14303
14304
14305
14306
14307
14308
14309
14310
14311
14312
14313
14314
14315
14316
14317
14318
14319
14320
14321
14322
14323
14324
14325
14326
14327
14328
14329
14330
14331
14332
14333
14334
14335
14336
14337
14338
14339
14340
14341
14342
14343
14344
14345
14346
14347
14348
14349
14350
14351
14352
14353
14354
14355
14356
14357
14358
14359
14360
14361
14362
14363
14364
14365
14366
14367
14368
14369
14370
14371
14372
14373
14374
14375
14376
14377
14378
14379
14380
14381
14382
14383
14384
14385
14386
14387
14388
14389
14390
14391
14392
14393
14394
14395
14396
14397
14398
14399
14400
14401
14402
14403
14404
14405
14406
14407
14408
14409
14410
14411
14412
14413
14414
14415
14416
14417
14418
14419
14420
14421
14422
14423
14424
14425
14426
14427
14428
14429
14430
14431
14432
14433
14434
14435
14436
14437
14438
14439
14440
14441
14442
14443
14444
14445
14446
14447
14448
14449
14450
14451
14452
14453
14454
14455
14456
14457
14458
14459
14460
14461
14462
14463
14464
14465
14466
14467
14468
14469
14470
14471
14472
14473
14474
14475
14476
14477
14478
14479
14480
14481
14482
14483
14484
14485
14486
14487
14488
14489
14490
14491
14492
14493
14494
14495
14496
14497
14498
14499
14500
14501
14502
14503
14504
14505
14506
14507
14508
14509
14510
14511
14512
14513
14514
14515
14516
14517
14518
14519
14520
14521
14522
14523
14524
14525
14526
14527
14528
14529
14530
14531
14532
14533
14534
14535
14536
14537
14538
14539
14540
14541
14542
14543
14544
14545
14546
14547
14548
14549
14550
14551
14552
14553
14554
14555
14556
14557
14558
14559
14560
14561
14562
14563
14564
14565
14566
14567
14568
14569
14570
14571
14572
14573
14574
14575
14576
14577
14578
14579
14580
14581
14582
14583
14584
14585
14586
14587
14588
14589
14590
14591
14592
14593
14594
14595
14596
14597
14598
14599
14600
14601
14602
14603
14604
14605
14606
14607
14608
14609
14610
14611
14612
14613
14614
14615
14616
14617
14618
14619
14620
14621
14622
14623
14624
14625
14626
14627
14628
14629
14630
14631
14632
14633
14634
14635
14636
14637
14638
14639
14640
14641
14642
14643
14644
14645
14646
14647
14648
14649
14650
14651
14652
14653
14654
14655
14656
14657
14658
14659
14660
14661
14662
14663
14664
14665
14666
14667
14668
14669
14670
14671
14672
14673
14674
14675
14676
14677
14678
14679
14680
14681
14682
14683
14684
14685
14686
14687
14688
14689
14690
14691
14692
14693
14694
14695
14696
14697
14698
14699
14700
14701
14702
14703
14704
14705
14706
14707
14708
14709
14710
14711
14712
14713
14714
14715
14716
14717
14718
14719
14720
14721
14722
14723
14724
14725
14726
14727
14728
14729
14730
14731
14732
14733
14734
14735
14736
14737
14738
14739
14740
14741
14742
14743
14744
14745
14746
14747
14748
14749
14750
14751
14752
14753
14754
14755
14756
14757
14758
14759
14760
14761
14762
14763
14764
14765
14766
14767
14768
14769
14770
14771
14772
14773
14774
14775
14776
14777
14778
14779
14780
14781
14782
14783
14784
14785
14786
14787
14788
14789
14790
14791
14792
14793
14794
14795
14796
14797
14798
14799
14800
14801
14802
14803
14804
14805
14806
14807
14808
14809
14810
14811
14812
14813
14814
14815
14816
14817
14818
14819
14820
14821
14822
14823
14824
14825
14826
14827
14828
14829
14830
14831
14832
14833
14834
14835
14836
14837
14838
14839
14840
14841
14842
14843
14844
14845
14846
14847
14848
14849
14850
14851
14852
14853
14854
14855
14856
14857
14858
14859
14860
14861
14862
14863
14864
14865
14866
14867
14868
14869
14870
14871
14872
14873
14874
14875
14876
14877
14878
14879
14880
14881
14882
14883
14884
14885
14886
14887
14888
14889
14890
14891
14892
14893
14894
14895
14896
14897
14898
14899
14900
14901
14902
14903
14904
14905
14906
14907
14908
14909
14910
14911
14912
14913
14914
14915
14916
14917
14918
14919
14920
14921
14922
14923
14924
14925
14926
14927
14928
14929
14930
14931
14932
14933
14934
14935
14936
14937
14938
14939
14940
14941
14942
14943
14944
14945
14946
14947
14948
14949
14950
14951
14952
14953
14954
14955
14956
14957
14958
14959
14960
14961
14962
14963
14964
14965
14966
14967
14968
14969
14970
14971
14972
14973
14974
14975
14976
14977
14978
14979
14980
14981
14982
14983
14984
14985
14986
14987
14988
14989
14990
14991
14992
14993
14994
14995
14996
14997
14998
14999
15000
15001
15002
15003
15004
15005
15006
15007
15008
15009
15010
15011
15012
15013
15014
15015
15016
15017
15018
15019
15020
15021
15022
15023
15024
15025
15026
15027
15028
15029
15030
15031
15032
15033
15034
15035
15036
15037
15038
15039
15040
15041
15042
15043
15044
15045
15046
15047
15048
15049
15050
15051
15052
15053
15054
15055
15056
15057
15058
15059
15060
15061
15062
15063
15064
15065
15066
15067
15068
15069
15070
15071
15072
15073
15074
15075
15076
15077
15078
15079
15080
15081
15082
15083
15084
15085
15086
15087
15088
15089
15090
15091
15092
15093
15094
15095
15096
15097
15098
15099
15100
15101
15102
15103
15104
15105
15106
15107
15108
15109
15110
15111
15112
15113
15114
15115
15116
15117
15118
15119
15120
15121
15122
15123
15124
15125
15126
15127
15128
15129
15130
15131
15132
15133
15134
15135
15136
15137
15138
15139
15140
15141
15142
15143
15144
15145
15146
15147
15148
15149
15150
15151
15152
15153
15154
15155
15156
15157
15158
15159
15160
15161
15162
15163
15164
15165
15166
15167
15168
15169
15170
15171
15172
15173
15174
15175
15176
15177
15178
15179
15180
15181
15182
15183
15184
15185
15186
15187
15188
15189
15190
15191
15192
15193
15194
15195
15196
15197
15198
15199
15200
15201
15202
15203
15204
15205
15206
15207
15208
15209
15210
15211
15212
15213
15214
15215
15216
15217
15218
15219
15220
15221
15222
15223
15224
15225
15226
15227
15228
15229
15230
15231
15232
15233
15234
15235
15236
15237
15238
15239
15240
15241
15242
15243
15244
15245
15246
15247
15248
15249
15250
15251
15252
15253
15254
15255
15256
15257
15258
15259
15260
15261
15262
15263
15264
15265
15266
15267
15268
15269
15270
15271
15272
15273
15274
15275
15276
15277
15278
15279
15280
15281
15282
15283
15284
15285
15286
15287
15288
15289
15290
15291
15292
15293
15294
15295
15296
15297
15298
15299
15300
15301
15302
15303
15304
15305
15306
15307
15308
15309
15310
15311
15312
15313
15314
15315
15316
15317
15318
15319
15320
15321
15322
15323
15324
15325
15326
15327
15328
15329
15330
15331
15332
15333
15334
15335
15336
15337
15338
15339
15340
15341
15342
15343
15344
15345
15346
15347
15348
15349
15350
15351
15352
15353
15354
15355
15356
15357
15358
15359
15360
15361
15362
15363
15364
15365
15366
15367
15368
15369
15370
15371
15372
15373
15374
15375
15376
15377
15378
15379
15380
15381
15382
15383
15384
15385
15386
15387
15388
15389
15390
15391
15392
15393
15394
15395
15396
15397
15398
15399
15400
15401
15402
15403
15404
15405
15406
15407
15408
15409
15410
15411
15412
15413
15414
15415
15416
15417
15418
15419
15420
15421
15422
15423
15424
15425
15426
15427
15428
15429
15430
15431
15432
15433
15434
15435
15436
15437
15438
15439
15440
15441
15442
15443
15444
15445
15446
15447
15448
15449
15450
15451
15452
15453
15454
15455
15456
15457
15458
15459
15460
15461
15462
15463
15464
15465
15466
15467
15468
15469
15470
15471
15472
15473
15474
15475
15476
15477
15478
15479
15480
15481
15482
15483
15484
15485
15486
15487
15488
15489
15490
15491
15492
15493
15494
15495
15496
15497
15498
15499
15500
15501
15502
15503
15504
15505
15506
15507
15508
15509
15510
15511
15512
15513
15514
15515
15516
15517
15518
15519
15520
15521
15522
15523
15524
15525
15526
15527
15528
15529
15530
15531
15532
15533
15534
15535
15536
15537
15538
15539
15540
15541
15542
15543
15544
15545
15546
15547
15548
15549
15550
15551
15552
15553
15554
15555
15556
15557
15558
15559
15560
15561
15562
15563
15564
15565
15566
15567
15568
15569
15570
15571
15572
15573
15574
15575
15576
15577
15578
15579
15580
15581
15582
15583
15584
15585
15586
15587
15588
15589
15590
15591
15592
15593
15594
15595
15596
15597
15598
15599
15600
15601
15602
15603
15604
15605
15606
15607
15608
15609
15610
15611
15612
15613
15614
15615
15616
15617
15618
15619
15620
15621
15622
15623
15624
15625
15626
15627
15628
15629
15630
15631
15632
15633
15634
15635
15636
15637
15638
15639
15640
15641
15642
15643
15644
15645
15646
15647
15648
15649
15650
15651
15652
15653
15654
15655
15656
15657
15658
15659
15660
15661
15662
15663
15664
15665
15666
15667
15668
15669
15670
15671
15672
15673
15674
15675
15676
15677
15678
15679
15680
15681
15682
15683
15684
15685
15686
15687
15688
15689
15690
15691
15692
15693
15694
15695
15696
15697
15698
15699
15700
15701
15702
15703
15704
15705
15706
15707
15708
15709
15710
15711
15712
15713
15714
15715
15716
15717
15718
15719
15720
15721
15722
15723
15724
15725
15726
15727
15728
15729
15730
15731
15732
15733
15734
15735
15736
15737
15738
15739
15740
15741
15742
15743
15744
15745
15746
15747
15748
15749
15750
15751
15752
15753
15754
15755
15756
15757
15758
15759
15760
15761
15762
15763
15764
15765
15766
15767
15768
15769
15770
15771
15772
15773
15774
15775
15776
15777
15778
15779
15780
15781
15782
15783
15784
15785
15786
15787
15788
15789
15790
15791
15792
15793
15794
15795
15796
15797
15798
15799
15800
15801
15802
15803
15804
15805
15806
15807
15808
15809
15810
15811
15812
15813
15814
15815
15816
15817
15818
15819
15820
15821
15822
15823
15824
15825
15826
15827
15828
15829
15830
15831
15832
15833
15834
15835
15836
15837
15838
15839
15840
15841
15842
15843
15844
15845
15846
15847
15848
15849
15850
15851
15852
15853
15854
15855
15856
15857
15858
15859
15860
15861
15862
15863
15864
15865
15866
15867
15868
15869
15870
15871
15872
15873
15874
15875
15876
15877
15878
15879
15880
15881
15882
15883
15884
15885
15886
15887
15888
15889
15890
15891
15892
15893
15894
15895
15896
15897
15898
15899
15900
15901
15902
15903
15904
15905
15906
15907
15908
15909
15910
15911
15912
15913
15914
15915
15916
15917
15918
15919
15920
15921
15922
15923
15924
15925
15926
15927
15928
15929
15930
15931
15932
15933
15934
15935
15936
15937
15938
15939
15940
15941
15942
15943
15944
15945
15946
15947
15948
15949
15950
15951
15952
15953
15954
15955
15956
15957
15958
15959
15960
15961
15962
15963
15964
15965
15966
15967
15968
15969
15970
15971
15972
15973
15974
15975
15976
15977
15978
15979
15980
15981
15982
15983
15984
15985
15986
15987
15988
15989
15990
15991
15992
15993
15994
15995
15996
15997
15998
15999
16000
16001
16002
16003
16004
16005
16006
16007
16008
16009
16010
16011
16012
16013
16014
16015
16016
16017
16018
16019
16020
16021
16022
16023
16024
16025
16026
16027
16028
16029
16030
16031
16032
16033
16034
16035
16036
16037
16038
16039
16040
16041
16042
16043
16044
16045
16046
16047
16048
16049
16050
16051
16052
16053

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Indian Summer, by William D. Howells</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
    <style type="text/css">
    <!--
    * {     font-family: Times;}
    P {     text-indent: 1em;
            margin-top: .75em;
            font-size: 14pt;
            margin-bottom: .75em; }
    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 {     text-align: center; }
    HR { width: 33%; }
    // -->
    </style>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Indian Summer,
<br>by William D. Howells</H1>

<PRE>
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.

This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.

Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.


**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****


Title: Indian Summer

Author: William D. Howells

Release Date: January, 2005  [EBook #7359]
[This file was first posted on April 20, 2003]
[Most recently updated May 3, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, INDIAN SUMMER ***




David Garcia, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed
Proofreaders Team
</PRE>
    
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <h1>
      INDIAN SUMMER
    </h1>
    <center>
      <b>BY<br>
      &nbsp;<br>
      WILLIAM D. HOWELLS<br>
      &nbsp;<br>
      &nbsp;<br>
      AUTHOR OF "THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM," "A MODERN INSTANCE,"
      "WOMAN'S REASON," ETC.</b>
    </center>
    
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <center>
      <b>INDIAN SUMMER</b>
    </center>
    <hr>
    <a name="I"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      I
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had certainly made the Des Vaches
      <i>Democrat-Republican</i> 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
      <i>Democrat-Republican</i> 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 <i>Democrat-Republican</i>. Then
      Colville contemptuously offered to sell out to the Republican
      committee in charge of the new enterprise, and they accepted
      his terms.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>Post-Democrat-Republican</i> (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 <i>Democrat-Republican</i>;
      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
      <i>Post-Democrat-Republican</i>. 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>Republican</i>, the fancy of building up a great local
      journal seized him, and he bought the <i>Wabash Valley
      Democrat</i>, uniting them under the name of the
      <i>Democrat-Republican</i>. 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>voyageurs</i> 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&#8212;there were doubts, growing
      out of his Eastern accent and the work of his New York
      tailor, at first&#8212;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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>Post-Democrat-Republican</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 caff&egrave;s 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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>festa</i>, 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....
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="II"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      II
    </h2>
    <p>
      Colville had readied this point in that sarcastic study of
      his own condition of mind for the advantage of his late
      readers in the <i>Post-Democrat-Republican</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "That first one is the Santa Trinit&agrave;, and the next is
      the Carraja, and that one quite down by the Cascine is the
      iron bridge. The Cascine you remember&#8212;the park where we
      were driving&#8212;that clump of woods there&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mr. Colville!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, Mrs. Bowen!" he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I should have known you anywhere," she exclaimed, with
      friendly pleasure in seeing him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;if you say so, Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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
      &amp; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, I knew," he answered, with decent sympathy.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville, whose mood was very susceptible to the weather,
      brightened in the ray. "I only arrived last night," he said,
      with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      "How glad you must be to get back! Did you ever see Florence
      more beautiful than it was this morning?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not for years," said Colville, with another smile for her
      pretty enthusiasm. "Not for seventeen years at the least
      calculation."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is it so many?" cried Mrs. Bowen, with lovely dismay. "Yes,
      it is," she sighed, and she did not speak for an appreciable
      interval.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I could imagine you'd never left it," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen reflected a moment. "Is that a compliment?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I had an obscure intention of saying something fine; but I
      don't think I've quite made it out," he owned.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thank you," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Effie doesn't hate any sort of useful knowledge," said her
      mother half jestingly. "She's just come to me from school at
      Vevay."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, then, I think she might," persisted Colville. "Don't you
      hate the origin of Florence a little?" he asked of the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;objectionable,"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh <i>no</i>!" replied Mrs. Bowen, with the deepest feeling.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville gave a melancholy laugh. "My friend is an
      abstraction, Mrs. Bowen, without sex or any sort of entity."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      A figure of <i>primo tenore</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, I can," said Colville, admiring the whole transaction
      and the parties to it with a passive smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="III"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      III
    </h2>
    <p>
      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&#8212;a thing that had
      not occurred to him in the stupid absorption of his passion
      for the other&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>Times</i>, the <i>Neue Freie Presse</i>
      of Vienna, and the <i>Italie</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      As the dinner progressed from soup to fish, and from the
      <i>entr&eacute;e</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It certainly isn't so good as it used to be," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, a great while ago; in a state of pre-existence, in
      fact," he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady looked a little puzzled, but interested. "In a state
      of prhe-existence?" she repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; when I was young," he added, catching the gleam in her
      eye. "When I was twenty-four. A great while ago."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You must be an Amerhican," said the lady, with a laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why do you think so? From my accent?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Frhom your metaphysics too. The Amerhicans like to talk in
      that way."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I didn't know it," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And the French, no?" asked Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lady laughed again. "There is a large Amerhican colony in
      Parhis. Perhaps we have learned to be like you."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "That interests me as an American," said Colville. "But why
      do you want a republic in Italy?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "When we have a constitutional king, why should we have a
      king?" asked the Italian.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>carte du jour</i>; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>porti&egrave;re</i>, and
      let himself into the brilliant interior.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You notice it, then?" Mrs. Bowen seemed delighted.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I did every moment you were together to-day. You don't mind
      my having been so personal in my observations?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, not at all," said Mrs. Bowen, and Colville laughed.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It must be true," he said, "what a French lady said to me at
      the <i>table-d'h&ocirc;te</i> dinner to-night: 'the
      Amerhicans always strhike the note of perhsonality.'" He
      neatly imitated the French lady's guttural accent.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I suppose we do," mused Mis. Bowen, "and that we don't mind
      it in each other. I wish <i>you</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, there's no hurry; put it off till to-morrow," said
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," returned Colville. "That is, I don't mind a little
      sprinkling. Who is the Junonian young person at the end of
      the room?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah," said Mrs. Bowen, "you can't be introduced to <i>her</i>
      first. But <i>isn't</i> she lovely?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes. It's a wonderful effect of white and gold."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Present me at once, then, before I forget not to say it to
      her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; I must keep you for some other person: anybody can talk
      to a pretty girl."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen seemed disposed to intensify his misery. "Did you
      ever see a more statuesque creature&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is there a fashion in faces?" asked Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, certainly. You must know that."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then why aren't all the ladies in the fashion?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It isn't one that can be put on. Besides, every one hasn't
      got Imogene Graham's figure to carry it off."
    </p>
    <p>
      "That's her name, then&#8212;Imogene Graham. It's a very
      pretty name."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>Post-Democrat-Republican</i>, in which he made a bitterly
      ironical comparison of the achievements of Italy and America
      in the last ten years.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I've met several of our countrymen since I arrived,"
      suggested Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville could not help laughing. "I wish <i>I</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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps, perhaps," cried the old gentleman, with cheerful
      assent.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I was talking with one of our German friends here just now,
      and he complained that the American girls&#8212;especially
      the rich ones&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, but we haven't," said Colville. "We're entire
      strangers."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="IV"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      IV
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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&#8212;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 <i>salon</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, how <i>good</i>!" 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm very glad you like it," he said, with a gravity that did
      not deceive them.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>better</i> than other people,
      but they are <i>different</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      "That's very pretty. They're different in everything but
      thinking themselves better. Their native modesty prevents
      that."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't exactly know what you mean," said Miss Graham, after
      a little hesitation.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "There was a French lady said to me at the
      <i>table-d'hote</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, I don't believe that," said Miss Graham.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Believe what?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "That the Americans always talk about themselves."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm not sure she meant that. You never can tell what a
      person means by what he says&#8212;or <i>she</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      "How shocking!".
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps the French lady meant that we always talk about
      other people. That's in the key of personality too."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But I don't believe we do," said Miss Graham. "At any rate,
      <i>she</i> was talking about <i>us</i>, then."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think we're very introspective?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps if you knew yourself better you wouldn't think so,"
      suggested Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, I know they are. I don't think any young person can be
      interesting."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then what becomes of all the novels? They're full of young
      persons."
    </p>
    <p>
      "They're ridiculous. If I were going to write a novel, I
      should take an old person for a hero&#8212;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 <i>Pictures of Travel</i>, 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&#8212;I was only sixteen, and it
      seemed as if I had had no more experience than a child. Oh, I
      like people to go <i>through</i> something. Don't you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, yes, I suppose I do. Other people."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; but don't you like it for yourself?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't tell; I haven't been through anything worth speaking
      of yet."
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Graham looked at him dubiously, but pursued with ardour:
      "Why, just getting back to Florence, after not having been
      here for so long&#8212;I should think it would be so
      romantic. Oh dear! I wish I were here for the second time."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you really think so?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, there's nothing like the first time in Florence."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I can't imagine it. I should think that recalling the
      old emotions would be perfectly fascinating."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>you</i> think about Florence,
      Miss Graham?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I? I've been here two months."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then it's too late?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Buffalo? I can imagine the difference. And it's not
      altogether to the disadvantage of Buffalo."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, have you been there?" asked Miss Graham, with a touching
      little eagerness. "Do you know anybody in Buffalo?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Some of the newspaper men; and I pass through there once a
      year on my way to New York&#8212;or used to. It's a lively
      place."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, it is," sighed Miss Graham fondly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do the girls of Buffalo still come out at night and dance by
      the light of the moon?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "What!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Miss Graham. "I can only remember the end of the
      war."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen had so swiftly advanced upon him that she caught
      the last words. "Why?" she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Because it's to-morrow, I suspect, and the invitation was
      for one day only."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, yes; agreeable enough&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen and Miss Graham exchanged glances above his
      head&#8212;a glance which demanded, "Didn't I tell you?" for
      a glance that answered, "Oh, he <i>is</i>!" Effie Bowen's
      eyes widened; she kept them fastened upon Colville in silent
      worship.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "We have them when there is dancing," returned Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, but they don't know anything but dancing," Miss Graham
      broke in. "I like some one who can talk something besides
      compliments."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, <i>young</i> 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>I</i> should
      like a gentleman to talk to me without a single word or look
      to show that he thought I was good-looking."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, how could he he?" Colville insinuated, and the young
      girl coloured.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I mean, if I were pretty. This everlasting adulation is
      insulting."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mr. Morton doesn't flatter," said Mrs. Bowen thoughtfully,
      turning the feather screen she held at her face, now
      edgewise, now flatwise, toward Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no," owned Miss Graham. "He's a clergyman."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, isn't he lovely?" cried Miss Graham. "There, Mrs. Bowen!
      Mr. Waters's manner is what I call <i>truly</i>
      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 <i>happy</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "American girls!" uttered Miss Graham, in a little scream.
      "Did Mr. Waters talk to you about <i>girls</i>?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes. Why not? He was probably in love with one once."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mr. Waters?" cried the girl. "What nonsense!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, then, with some old lady. Would you like that better?"
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Graham looked at Mrs. Bowen for permission, as it
      seemed, and then laughed, but did not attempt any reply to
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You find even that incredible of such pyramidal antiquity,"
      he resumed. "Well, it <i>is</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh! What could it be?" demanded Miss Graham.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, it wouldn't be so easy to say right off-hand," answered
      Colville indolently.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      They entered into a discussion which is always fruitful with
      Americans&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, perhaps it will come right in the next generation,
      then; she will let her daughter have the freedom she hadn't."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not if I'm alive to prevent it," cried Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville laughed. "Which plan do you prefer, Miss Graham?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't think it's quite the same now as it used to be,"
      answered the girl evasively.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, thank you," said her mother quickly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Effie is out of the question. It's time you were in bed,
      Effie."
    </p>
    <p>
      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>I</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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You're so <i>funny</i>!" she cried, and ran and escaped
      beyond the <i>porti&egrave;re</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen stared in the same direction, but not with
      severity. "Really, Effie has been carried a little beyond
      herself."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well," said Colville, "that's <i>one</i> conquest since I
      came to Florence. And merely by being funny! When I was in
      Florence before, Mrs. 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 <i>my</i>
      old eyes! No, we belong, each of us, to our own generation.
      Mrs. Bowen," he said, with a touch of tragedy&#8212;whether
      real or affected, he did not well know himself&#8212;in his
      hardiness, "what has become of Mrs. Pilsbury?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mrs. Milbury, you mean?" gasped Mrs. Bowen, in affright at
      his boldness.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Milbury, Bilbury, Pilsbury&#8212;it's all one, so long as it
      isn't&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;"you wouldn't let
      Miss Graham go out walking alone with a dotard like me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Certainly not," said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>such</i> a pleasant evening! What was your day, did you
      say?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, any day!" said Mrs. Bowen cordially, giving her hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you know whom you look like?" he asked, holding it.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Lina Ridgely."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Was that her name?" asked Miss Graham, when the clock had
      had its say. "Lina Ridgely?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; that was <i>my</i> name," answered Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes!" murmured the young girl apologetically.
    </p>
    <p>
      "She led him on; she certainly encouraged him. It was
      shocking. He was quite wild about it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "She must have been a cruel girl. How <i>could</i> he speak
      of it so lightly?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes. How bold it was! A <i>young</i> 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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Old? I don't think he looked old. He looked sad. Yes, it's
      left its mark on him."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="V"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      V
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>facchini</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What a very Tourgu&eacute;neffish 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The Inglehart boys? No. What are the Inglehart boys?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I hope so too," said Colville. "I should like to see them."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Dear me!" said the lady, with a glance at the clock. "It's
      five! I must be going."
    </p>
    <p>
      The other ladies went, and Colville approached to take leave,
      but Miss Graham detained him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What is Tourgu&eacute;neffish?" she demanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The quality of the great Russian novelist,
      Tourgu&eacute;neff," said Colville, perceiving that she had
      not heard of him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You ought to read him. The samovar sends up its agreeable
      odour all through his books. Read <i>Lisa</i> if you want
      your heart really broken.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course I shall tell her what you said."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, I don't object to a certain degree of cheerfulness in
      books; only don't carry it too far&#8212;that's all."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      He stirred his tea, and shook with an inward laugh as he
      carried it to his lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What a wonderful old place it is! That curious
      fa&ccedil;ade, 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&#8212;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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Don't you think," she asked, drawing it from the samovar,
      "that it is very sad having the convents suppressed?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It was very sad having slavery abolished&#8212;for some
      people," suggested Colville; he felt the unfairness of the
      point he had made.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," sighed Miss Graham.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville stood stirring his second cup of tea, when the
      <i>porti&egrave;re</i> parted, and showed Mrs. Bowen
      wistfully pausing on the threshold. Her face was pale, but
      she looked extremely pretty there.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;<i>I</i> don't know
      why!&#8212;in my character of old family friend, doing my
      best to make life a burden to the young ladies."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know, unless it's because I'm a humane person, and
      have some consideration for your headache."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, that's all gone," said Mrs. Bowen. "It was one of those
      convenient headaches&#8212;if you ever had them, you'd
      know&#8212;that go off at sunset."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But you'd have another to-morrow."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, I'm safe for a whole fortnight from another."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then you leave me without an excuse, and I was just wishing
      I had none," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think he likes to make little effects," said Mrs. Bowen
      judiciously. "He always did, rather."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, was he like this when he was young?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't consider him very old now."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I like it," said Miss Graham, to her needle.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I can't imagine Mr. Colville's being priggish!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "He isn't slovenly now," suggested Miss Graham.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no; he's quite swell," said Mrs. Bowen, depriving the
      adjective of slanginess by the refinement of her tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well," said Miss Graham, "I don't see how you could have
      endured her after that. It was atrocious."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, but she ought to have found out before she led him on
      so far."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did she ever say why she didn't love him?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; I don't suppose she could. The only thing I remember her
      saying was that he was 'too much of a mixture.'"
    </p>
    <p>
      "What <i>did</i> she mean by that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know exactly."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think he's insincere?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no. Perhaps she meant that he wasn't single-minded."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Fickle?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No. He certainly wasn't that in her case."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Undecided?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "He was decided enough with her&#8212;at last."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene dropped the hopeless quest, "How can a man ever stand
      such a thing?" she sighed.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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,"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It was shocking in her to show it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It wasn't very nice. But it was a letter that any girl might
      have been proud to show."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, she <i>couldn't</i> have done it to gratify her vanity!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The latter spoke first. "Do you think he was very much broken
      by it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, he was young enough then to outlive it. After all, they
      were a boy and girl."
    </p>
    <p>
      "A boy and girl! How old were they?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "He must have been twenty-three or four, and she was twenty."
    </p>
    <p>
      "My age! Do you call that being a girl?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She was old enough to know what she was about," said Mrs.
      Bowen justly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, she sees that he is good," said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, she sees that he's something very much more. Mr. Waters
      is good."
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Graham had the best of the argument, and so Mrs. Bowen
      did not reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I don't think Mr. Colville was very deeply offended at
      being asked to go with us."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Imogene, with another sigh, "he didn't seem so. I
      suppose there's always an undercurrent of sadness&#8212;of
      tragedy&#8212;in everything for him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't suppose anything of the kind," cried Mrs. Bowen
      gaily. "He's had time enough to get over it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do people <i>ever</i> get over such things?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes&#8212;men."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It must be because he was young, as you say. But if it had
      happened <i>now</i>?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, it <i>couldn't</i> happen now. He's altogether too cool
      and calculating."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think he's cool and calculating?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No. He's too old for a broken heart&#8212;a new one."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mrs. Bowen," demanded the girl solemnly, "could <i>you</i>
      forgive yourself for such a thing if you had done it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, perfectly well, if I wasn't in love with him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But if you'd made him <i>think</i> you were?" pursued the
      girl breathlessly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "If I were a flirt&#8212;yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>I</i> couldn't," said Imogene, with tragic depth.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, be done with your intensities, and go to bed, Imogene,"
      said Mrs. Bowen, giving her a playful push.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="VI"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      VI
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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&#8212;the
      veritable costumes&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She and Miss Graham called for him with her carriage the next
      night, when it was time to go to Madame Uccelli's.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But then it may be too late," he urged. "Is it very far?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Mrs. Bowen. "It's ridiculously far. It's outside
      the Roman Gate. I don't see why people live at that
      distance."
    </p>
    <p>
      "In order to give the friends you bring the more pleasure of
      your company, Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah! that's very well. But you're not logical."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Mrs. Bowen; "we are so much obliged to you for
      them."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, I sent you <i>no flowers</i>," said Colville, startled
      into untimely earnest.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And in Buffalo they always do," Miss Graham added.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>remise</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>Isn't</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you ever sit up so late as that in Des Vaches?" asked
      Miss Graham mischievously.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes; I was editor of a morning paper," he explained. But
      he did not like the imputation of her question.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>abandon</i>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>Your</i> daughter?" asked the fond parent at his elbow.
      "That is mine yonder in red."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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, <i>do</i> take me to get something to eat!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why don't <i>you</i> dance?" she demanded mockingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I would if you'd let me dance with you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>you</i> dance?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, what fun!" cried Miss Graham; but the fun had not really
      begun yet.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes; twice," he answered, and kept on talking with her
      and Madame Uccelli. After five minutes or so something
      occurred to Colville. "Have <i>you</i> found the way to the
      supper-room yet, Mrs. Bowen?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No!" she owned, with a small, pathetic laugh, which
      expressed a certain physical faintness, and reproached him
      with insupportable gentleness for his selfish obtuseness.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Let me show you the way," he cried.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, I <i>am</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>were</i> 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&#8212;she made me feel
      as if I <i>could</i> dance."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was very sweet, but Colville had to protest. "Oh no; you
      didn't see me <i>dancing</i>; you saw me <i>not dancing</i>.
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no; you <i>don't</i> think of going away for that!" said
      Mrs. Bowen, not heeding the rest of his joking.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, the time has been when I have left Florence for loss,"
      said Colville, with the air of preparing himself to listen to
      reason.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You mustn't," said Mrs. Bowen briefly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, very well, then, I won't," said Colville whimsically, as
      if that settled it.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen did not respond to the question of placating and
      punishing her <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>tables d'h&ocirc;te</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="VII"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      VII
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Good <i>morning</i>!" 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville looked round on the Rev. Mr. Waters, and took his
      friendly hand. "Good morning&#8212;glad to see you," he
      answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      They now found themselves face to face with the librarian,
      and Mr. Waters made a gesture of waiving himself in
      Colville's favour.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no!" said the latter; "you had better ask. I am going to
      put this gentleman through rather an extended course of
      sprouts."
    </p>
    <p>
      The librarian smiled with the helplessness of a foreigner,
      who knows his interlocutor's English, but not the meaning of
      it.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I shall see," said the librarian, and he went upon a quest
      that kept him some minutes.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You're not thinking of taking Savonarola's life, I suppose?"
      suggested Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You're right, sir&#8212;you're right," cried the old man
      enthusiastically. "They're a gifted race, a people of
      genius."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then Villari hasn't satisfied you that Savonarola wasn't a
      Protestant?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You are one of the last men I should have expected to find
      among the <i>Arrabiati</i>," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;and some other things,"
      he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>thought</i> 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&#8212;or Effie's health&#8212;and I was
      just making the man stop and let us out for a little walk."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "We shall be very glad indeed," said the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "That's very polite of you. But Miss Effie makes no effort to
      conceal her dismay," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;the Cascine or the
      Boboli Gardens. Do they keep the fountain of youth turned on
      here during the winter still?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I've never seen it," said Imogene gaily.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course not. You never looked for it. Neither did I when I
      was here before. But it wouldn't escape me now."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;formlessly,
      as people always think&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Should you have thought," she asked, turning her face back
      toward him, "that it would be so hot in the sun to-day?
      <i>Oh</i>, that beautiful river! How it twists and writhes
      along! Do you remember that sonnet of Longfellow's&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville; "only I should want a good while to say
      it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>I</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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I would if I could remember the names of the characters. But
      I get them mixed up."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, <i>I</i> never do! I remember the least one of them, and
      all they do and say."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I used to."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It seems to me you <i>used</i> to do everything."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It seems to me as if I did."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;&nbsp; "'I remember, when I think,<br>
      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That my youth was half divine.'"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, Tennyson&#8212;yes! <i>He's</i> fascinating. Don't you
      think he's fascinating?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Very," said Colville. He was wondering whether this were the
      kind of talk that he thought was literary when he was a young
      fellow.
    </p>
    <p>
      "How perfectly weird the 'Vision of Sin' is!" Imogene
      continued. "Don't you like <i>weird</i> things?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, <i>I</i> think they do! I've had dreams that I've lived
      on for days. Do you ever have prophetic dreams?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; but they never come true. When they do, I know that I
      didn't have them."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What <i>do</i> you mean?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh!" cried the girl, half puzzled, half amused. "Then of
      course you don't believe in ghosts?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; I expect to be one myself some day. But I'm in no hurry
      to mingle with them."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I feel as if I were carrying it," said Colville. "It's as
      fatiguing as walking on railroad ties."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>is</i> winter?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;that is, it seems to
      me now for the first time, but one has to begin the other
      way&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, how delightful! Do you really believe that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, I don't know that I do. But I shouldn't have much
      difficulty in proving it, I think, to the sympathetic
      understanding."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wish you would prove it to mine. It sounds so pretty, I'm
      sure it must be true."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, then, it isn't necessary. I'll reserve my arguments for
      Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You had better. She isn't at all romantic. She says it's
      very well for me she isn't&#8212;that her being
      matter-of-fact lets me be as romantic as I like."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then Mrs. Bowen isn't as romantic as she would like to be if
      she hadn't charge of a romantic young lady?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I don't say that. Dear me! I'd no idea it <i>could</i>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "'It was the nightingale, and not the lark,'" suggested
      Colville lazily.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, <i>don't</i> you think <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> is
      divine?" demanded Imogene, promptly dropping the question of
      the bird.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know about Romeo," returned Colville, "but it's
      sometimes occurred to me that Juliet was rather
      forth-putting."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You <i>know</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You would like it five hundred nights in the year, like
      <i>Hazel Kirke</i>? That would be a good deal of Romeo, not
      to say Juliet."
    </p>
    <p>
      "They ought to do it out of respect to Shakespeare. Don't you
      like Shakespeare?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, I've seen the time when I preferred Alexander Smith,"
      said Colville evasively.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Alexander Smith? Who in the world is Alexander Smith?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "How recent you are! Alexander Smith was an immortal who
      flourished about the year 1850."
    </p>
    <p>
      "That was before I was born. How could I remember him? But I
      don't feel so very recent for all that."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Neither do I, this morning," said Colville. "I was up at one
      of Pharaoh's balls last night, and I danced too much."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      With what he felt to be haste for his relief she said, "Don't
      you hate to be told to read a book?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I used to&#8212;quarter of a century ago," said Colville,
      recognising that this was the way young people talked, even
      then.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Used to?" she repeated. "Don't you now?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What kind of books do you like to buy?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, no kind. I think we ought to get all our books out of
      the library."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you never like to talk in earnest?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, not often," said Colville. "Because, if you do, you
      can't say with a good conscience afterward that you were only
      in fun."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh! And do you always like to talk so that you can get out
      of things afterward?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No. I didn't say that, did I?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Very nearly, I should think."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I'm glad I didn't quite."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I like people to be outspoken&#8212;to say everything they
      think," said the girl, regarding him with a puzzled look.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I foresee that I shall become a favourite," answered
      Colville. "I say a great deal more than I think."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh!" deeply sighed the young girl. "No, I never read it.
      Tell me what it is. I <i>must</i> read it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "The rest is all talk&#8212;very good talk; but I doubt
      whether it would interest you. He goes on to talk of a great
      many things&#8212;-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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, how perfectly delightful! how shameful!" cried the girl.
      "I <i>must</i> read it. What is it in? What is the name of
      the story?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It isn't a story," said Colville. "Did you ever see anything
      lovelier than these statues?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Imogene. "<i>Are</i> they good?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "They are much better than good&#8212;they are the very worst
      rococo."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What makes you say they are beautiful, then?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, don't you see? They commemorate youth, gaiety,
      brilliant, joyous life. That's what that kind of statues was
      made for&#8212;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
      <i>f&eacute;tes champ&ecirc;tres</i>. 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&#8212;the worse, the better,"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know what in the world you <i>do</i> mean," said
      Imogene, laughing uneasily.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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
      <i>much</i>. When I was fifteen I wouldn't read anything but
      Scott. Don't you like Thackeray? Oh, he's so <i>cynical</i>!
      It's perfectly delightful."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Cynical?" repeated Colville thoughtfully. "I was looking
      into <i>The Newcomes</i> the other day, and I thought he was
      rather sentimental"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;to Mrs. Bowen, I
      mean."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville resented this freedom of Mr. Morion'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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mrs. Bowen asked him to read it," Imogene continued.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did she?" asked Colville pensively.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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. Morion thought. Which do
      you? Don't you think the 'Legend of Pornic' is splendid?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, let us!" cried Imogene, rushing down to the brink. "I
      don't want to throw stones into it, but to get near
      it&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Lovely!" murmured the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      He offered her a flat pebble. "Would you like to try one?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It would spoil my gloves," she said, in deprecating refusal.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Let <i>me</i> try it!" cried Imogene. "I'm not afraid of my
      gloves."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville yielded the pebble, looking at her with the thought
      of how intoxicating he should once have found this bit of
      wilful <i>abandon</i>, but feeling rather sorry for it now.
      "Oh, perhaps not?" he said, laying his hand upon hers, and
      looking into her eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene hid her face in her muff, and Effie Bowen bowed hers
      against Imogene's shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>risotto</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "They say she <i>is</i>," said another. "They say she's
      awfully intellectual."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Boston?" queried a third.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, Kalamazoo. The centre of culture is out there now."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.'"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, that's a good subject&#8212;'Ullalume.'"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I suppose she's read it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She's read 'most everything, they say."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What's an Ullalume, anyway, Parker?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      The draughtsman said, "Well, all right!" and sat down again.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Hall talked with her the most. What did she say, Hall?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Hall can't remember words in three syllables, but he says it
      was mighty brilliant and mighty deep."
    </p>
    <p>
      "They say she's a niece of Mrs. Bowen's. She's staying with
      Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "But she must have been a very pretty girl," one of them put
      in.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, she has a good deal of style yet."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes, but she never could have been a beauty like the
      other one."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you have a pleasant drive?" asked Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Very," said the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mr. Morton brought you these roses," continued Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh," said Imogene, with a cold glance at them.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The Flemmings have asked us to a party Thursday. There is to
      be dancing."
    </p>
    <p>
      "The Flemmings?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you have a pleasant walk?" asked Mrs. Bowen, a breath
      more chillily than she had asked if they had a pleasant
      drive.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Was there anybody you knew in the Cascine?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen did not answer anything; she let the book lie in
      her lap.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What an odd person Mr. Colville is!" said Imogene, after a
      moment. "Don't you think he's very different from other
      gentlemen?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, he has such a peculiar way of talking."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What peculiar way?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I don't know. Plenty of the young men I see talk
      cynically, and I do sometimes myself&#8212;desperately, don't
      you know. But then I know very well we don't mean anything by
      it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And do you think Mr. Colville does? Do you think he talks
      cynically?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Bowen. "In his way."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>flat</i>! Oh, it's perfectly intoxicating
      to be with him. I would give the world to talk as he does."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What was your talk all about?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I don't know. I suppose it would have been called rather
      intellectual."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't mean that he's positively old," said Mrs. Bowen.
      "He's only old comparatively."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I <i>like</i> 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 <i>wish</i> 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>I</i> could do that!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wish he could have avoided the occasion for his bravado,"
      said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think I was a little to blame, perhaps," said the girl. "I
      beckoned him to come and take the vacant place."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't see that that was an excuse," returned Mrs. Bowen
      primly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know. How had you been silly?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Effie," she said at last, in a husky whisper, "what did
      Imogene say to Mr. Colville to-day that made him laugh?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know," said the child. "They kept laughing at so
      many things."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Laughing?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; he laughed. Do you mean toward the last, when he had
      been throwing stones into the river?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It must have been then."
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>him</i> laugh. She was so very stiff just afterward that
      he said the weather had changed, and that made <i>us</i>
      laugh."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Was that all?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Does it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes&#8212;yes. But don't pull me down so; you hurt my neck.
      Good night."
    </p>
    <p>
      The child let her go. "I haven't said my prayer yet, mamma. I
      was thinking."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, say it now, then," said the mother gently.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the child had finished she turned upon her cheek. "Good
      night, mamma."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="VIII"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      VIII
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;or more frequently it was
      his hostess&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>foresti&egrave;re</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;though he did not prove
      this by experiment&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps they think you can speak English better," said the
      lady.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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-&agrave;-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 <i>dolce
      lume</i> of print, they never betrayed it; and the authorship
      of his letter about the American artists in Florence, which
      he printed in the <i>American Register</i> at Paris, was not
      traced to him for a whole week.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;nor, for that matter, could any one have
      understood through European tradition&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;two young fellows in old Florentine dress, with a
      third habited as a nun.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You preach the true American gospel," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course; there is no other gospel. That is the gospel."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The maskers had passed out of the piazza, now, and "Have you
      seen our friends at Palazzo Pinti lately?" said Mr. Waters.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not very," said Colville. "I was just on my way there."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wish you would make them my compliments. Such a beautiful
      young creature."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville; "she is certainly a beautiful girl."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I meant Mrs. Bowen," returned the old man quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; she's beautiful. The young girl is good-looking&#8212;I
      don't deny that; but she is very crude yet."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>young</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," mildly persisted the old man; "she couldn't be crude in
      mind without being crude in looks."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You mean," pursued Colville, smiling, but not wholly
      satisfied, "that she hasn't a lovely nature?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "The woman is what the man makes her? That is convenient for
      the woman, and relieves her of all responsibility."
    </p>
    <p>
      "The man is what the woman makes him, too, but not so much
      so. The man was cast into a deep sleep, you
      know&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "And the woman was what he dreamed her. I wish she were."
    </p>
    <p>
      "In most cases she is," said Mr. Waters.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, only two Spanish students with mandolins," said Imogene;
      "but you can see they're <i>beginning</i> to come."
    </p>
    <p>
      "They'll stop now," murmured Effie, with gentle
      disappointment; "it's commencing to rain."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You can't expect them to let their chain-armour get rusty,"
      said Colville. "You ought to have been with
      me&#8212;minstrels in scale-armour, Florentines of
      Savonarola's times, nuns, clowns, demons, fairies&#8212;no
      end to them."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It's very well saying we ought to have been with you; but we
      can't go anywhere alone."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What haven't I been asked yet?" demanded Mrs. Bowen, coming
      lightly toward them from a door at the side of the
      <i>salon</i>. 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, you haven't been asked how you have been this long
      time," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, shut up in my cell at Hotel d'Atene, writing a short
      history of the Florentine people for Miss Effie."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Effie, take Mr. Colville's hat," said her mother. "We're
      going to make you stay to lunch," she explained to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is that so?" he asked, with an effect of polite curiosity.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think Effie will like to read that kind of history," said
      her mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The last Carnival, I thought there was never going to be any
      end to it; I was so glad when Lent came."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Glad when <i>Lent</i> 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
      <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i> but as a devotee.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I suppose <i>you</i> will have to go through it all,"
      said Mrs. Bowen, in reward of the girl's acquiescence.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You're rather out of the way of it up here," said Colville.
      "You had better let me go about with the young
      ladies&#8212;if you can trust them to the care of an old
      fellow like me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes; I understand that."
    </p>
    <p>
      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, <i>he</i> wouldn't consent."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'll engage to get <i>his</i> consent," said the girl. "What
      I was afraid of was that I couldn't get yours, Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Am I so severe as that?" asked Mrs. Bowen softly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Quite," replied Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps," thought Colville, "it isn't always silent
      submission."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>corso</i>
      in Via Cerratani and Via Tornabuoni. There were some masks in
      carriages, and from one they actually threw plaster
      <i>confetti</i>; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It certainly doesn't compare with the Carnival last year,"
      said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, poor Mr. Colville!" cried Imogene. "He isn't altogether
      to blame."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>you</i> sing such
      songs? You wouldn't let Effie!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, I wouldn't let Effie. The times are changed. I wouldn't
      let Effie go to the theatre alone with a young gentleman."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>purple</i> anemones?"
      he asked her one day in presenting them to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, it is quite time I should be wearing purple," she said
      gently.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, Mrs. Bowen!" he reproached her. "Why do I bring purple
      violets to Miss Effie?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You must ask Effie!" said Mrs. Bowen, with a laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      "He is a bachelor, and there is a natural affinity between
      bachelors and widows&#8212;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 <i>bit</i>
      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&#8212;which he probably isn't, if he's like other
      men in such matters&#8212;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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thank you," said Colville, with a fine, remote
      dissatisfaction. "I supposed I was merely enjoying myself."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="IX"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      IX
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know. What do you think?" she asked in turn.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, it's for you to do the thinking. I only know what I
      want."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene said nothing, while she watched the internal debate
      as it expressed itself in Mrs. Bowen's face.
    </p>
    <p>
      "People go in boxes," she said thoughtfully; "but you would
      feel that a box wasn't the same thing exactly?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>We</i> went on the floor," suggested Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It was very different then. And, besides, Mrs. Finlay had
      absolutely <i>no</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Really," said Colville, "when it comes to that, I don't see
      any harm in it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And you say go?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I say whatever you say."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Which of us has been so good as to deserve this?" asked
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Come," said Mrs. Bowen, "you must go with us and help us
      choose our dominoes."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Which is which?" the ladies both challenged him, in the
      mask's conventional falsetto, when they came out.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      They all laughed; the natural mistake seemed particularly
      droll to Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Come," cried Mrs. Bowen; "it's time we should be going."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      A mask in red from head to foot attached himself to the
      party, and began to make love to her in excellent pantomime.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville was annoyed. He asked her if he should tell the
      fellow to take himself off.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't think it's remarkable for anything but its fervour,"
      said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I should like to see you making love to some lady," she
      rejoined mischievously.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will make love to you, if you like," he said, but he felt
      in an instant that his joke was in bad taste.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You're sure he doesn't bore you?" suggested Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, indeed. He's very amusing."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, all right!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You weren't afraid of him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, he was a real Italian."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, so I am, Effie," answered her mother, "and I don't
      think it's fair myself. What shall we do about it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I should like something to eat," said the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, an <i>ice</i>," 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>can</i>
      they?" cried the girl, shuddering.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Bless my soul!" cried Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen was apparently too much shocked to say anything.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      If Mr. Waters took this philosophical tone about the
      Carnival, it was not possible for Colville to take any other.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not at all," said the old man promptly. "I have seen nothing
      but the most harmless gaiety throughout the evening."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why aren't you young people dancing?" asked Mr. Waters, in a
      cheerful general way, of Mrs. Bowen's party.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville was glad to break the silence. "Mrs. Bowen doesn't
      approve of dancing at vegliones."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No?&#8212;why not?" inquired the old man, with invincible
      simplicity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen smiled her pretty, small smile below her mask.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The company is apt to be rather mixed," she said quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," pursued Mr. Waters; "but you could dance with one
      another. The company seems very well behaved."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, quite so," Mrs. Bowen assented.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Probably it passed for a joke with her," said Colville, in
      order to say something.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, very likely; but I shall always feel that my impressions
      of the were a young man like you&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogens turned and looked at Colville through the eye-holes
      of her mask; even in that sort of isolation he thought her
      eyes expressed surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It never occurred to you before that I was a young man," he
      suggested gravely.
    </p>
    <p>
      She did not reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      After a little interval, "Imogene," asked Mrs. Bowen, "would
      you like to dance?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What would be the use?" returned the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, why have you let me do you such injustice?" she murmured
      intensely. "I never shall forgive myself."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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,'"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Hush," she said; "I don't like to hear you talk so."
    </p>
    <p>
      "How?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "About&#8212;age!" she answered. "It makes me
      feel&#8212;&#8212;- Don't to-night!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you believe in pre-existence?" he demanded of Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes!" she flashed back. "This very instant it was just as
      if I had been here before, long ago."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Dancing with me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "With you? Yes&#8212;yes&#8212;I think so."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then you remember what I said to you&#8212;tried to say to
      you&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; it was so long ago? What was it?" she whispered
      dreamily.
    </p>
    <p>
      A turn of the waltz brought them near Mrs. Bowen; her mask
      seemed to wear a dumb reproach.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, I can't remember, either! Aren't you getting rather
      tired of the waltz and me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no; go on!" she deeply murmured. "Try to remember."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It came into his head to ask, "Who is <i>he</i>?" and as he
      had got past denying himself anything, he asked it.
    </p>
    <p>
      "He? What he?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "He that Mrs. Bowen thought might object to your seeing the
      Carnival?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh!&#8212;oh yes! That was the not impossible he."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is that all?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then he's not even the not improbable he?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, indeed."
    </p>
    <p>
      They waltzed in silence. Then, "Why did you ask me that?" she
      murmured.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know. Was it such a strange question?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know. You ought to."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, if it was wrong, I'm old enough to know better."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You promised not to say 'old' any more."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I suppose I mustn't. But you mustn't get me to ignore
      it, and then laugh at me for it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh!" she reproached him, "you think I could do that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You could if it was you who were here with me once before."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I know I wasn't."
    </p>
    <p>
      Again they were silent, and it was he who spoke first. "I
      wish you would tell me why you object to the interdicted
      topic?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Because&#8212;because I like every time to be perfect in
      itself."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh! And this wouldn't be perfect in itself if I
      were&#8212;not so young as some people?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I didn't mean that. No; but if you didn't mention it, no one
      else would think of it or care for it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did any one ever accuse you of flattering, Miss Graham?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not till now. And you are unjust."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, I withdraw the accusation."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And will you ever pretend such a thing again?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, never!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I have your promise."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I must believe in you after this," he said, with a smile
      which his mask hid.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thanks," she breathed. It seemed to him that her hand closed
      convulsively upon his in their light clasp.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; I will help you. It shall be <i>our</i> secret."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The music ceased again. He whirled her to the seat where he
      had left Mrs. Bowen. She was not there, nor the others.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He sat down rather blankly with Imogene to wait for her
      return; it was the only thing they could do.
    </p>
    <p>
      It had grown very hot. The air was thick with dust. The
      lights burned through it as through a fog.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I believe I will take off my mask," she said. "I can
      scarcely breathe."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no," protested Colville; "that won't do."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I feel faint," she gasped.
    </p>
    <p>
      His heart sank. "Don't," he said incoherently. "Come with me
      into the vestibule, and get a breath of air."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why they must be lost. But isn't it perfect sitting here and
      watching the maskers?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perfect," said Colville distractedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Don't you like to make romances about the different ones?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Poor Mrs. Bowen," laughed the girl. "It will be such a joke
      on her, with her punctilious notions, getting lost from her
      <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i> at a Carnival ball! I shall
      tell every one."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no, don't," said Colville, in horror that big mask
      scarcely concealed.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why not?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It wouldn't be at all the thing."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not at all," she said. But she added, "Don't be gone long."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no," he answered, pulling off his mask. "Be sure not to
      move from here on any account."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I saw your lady wife with another gentleman," cried one of
      them, in a subtle misinterpretation of the cause of his
      distraction.
    </p>
    <p>
      The throng had immensely increased; the clowns and harlequins
      ran shrieking up and down, and leaped over one another's
      heads.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was useless. He went back to Imogene with a
      heart-sickening fear that she too might have vanished.
    </p>
    <p>
      But she was still there.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>me</i> this time. But he didn't. If you'd been
      here you might have asked him where Mrs. Bowen was."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, all that we can do is to wait for them," he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes," she answered easily. "They'll be sure to come back
      in the course of time."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>La signora &egrave; partita.</i>"
    </p>
    <p>
      "The lady gone?" repeated Colville, taking this to be part of
      the red mask's joke.
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>La bambina pareva poco lene.</i>"
    </p>
    <p>
      "The little one not well?" echoed Colville again, rising.
      "Are you joking?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I beg your pardon, and thank you," said Colville. He had no
      need to speak to Imogene&#8212;, her hand was already
      trembling on his arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      They drove home in silence through the white moonlight of the
      streets, filled everywhere with the gay voices and figures of
      the Carnival.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm&#8212;I'm very sorry," faltered the girl, "that we
      didn't go back to her at once."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will come round in the morning," he said. "I must know how
      Effie is."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; come."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <h2>
      X
    </h2>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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;&#8212;"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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Abused my kindness to Miss Graham?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Nothing could be politer than all this.
    </p>
    <p>
      "And you won't allow me to punish myself for not being there
      to give you even a moral support?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Certainly not. As I told Imogene, young people will be young
      people; and I knew how fond you were of dancing."
    </p>
    <p>
      Though it pierced him, Colville could not help admiring the
      neatness of this thrust. "I didn't know you were so ironical,
      Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ironical? Not at all."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah! I see I'm not forgiven."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It would depend upon the person," said the girl, with
      innocent liveliness, recognising the extravagance in his
      tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," he said, with an affected pensiveness, "so very much
      depends upon the person in such a case."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville heaved an involuntary sigh. "Do you feel very much
      used up?" he asked Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not at all," she laughed. "Do you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You must have slept hard. You're pretty apt to dream when
      you're waking."
    </p>
    <p>
      "How do you know?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "But you mustn't say you <i>used!</i> That's forbidden now.
      Remember your promise!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "My promise? What promise?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, if you've forgotten already."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I remember. But that was last night."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Don't you think so?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Half the time. Do you ever have day dreams?" he asked Effie,
      pressing her cheek against his own.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What was it about?" asked the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene involuntarily bent forward.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, I can't tell you now. She's trying to hear us."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no," protested the girl, with a laugh. "I was thinking
      of something else."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "We might whisper it," she suggested.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," whispered the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What nonsense!" said Imogene. "You made it up."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did he have to die when he got to the oratory?" asked the
      child, with gentle regret.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It appears so," said Colville, sketching. "He would have
      been dead by this time, anyway, you know."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," she reluctantly admitted.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I shall really begin to think you believe such things," said
      Imogene. "Perhaps you <i>are</i> a Catholic."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen returned to the room, and sat down.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, it seems to me as if I'd had <i>nothing</i> but the
      Buondelmonti dinned into me since I came to Florence!" she
      answered in lively despair.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Beautiful!" murmured the girl; the child only sighed.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;that's a different thing;
      <i>that's</i> no fairy story; that's a real miracle; and I
      believe this one happened&#8212;it's so impossible."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes, it must have happened," said the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think it's so very hard to forgive, then?" asked Mrs.
      Bowen gravely.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, not for ladies," replied Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      She flushed, and her eyes shone when she glanced at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Shall I lie down on the sofa here?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, on your bed."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'll go with you, Effie," said Imogene, "and see that you're
      nicely tucked in."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Does he seem gloomy?" asked Mrs. Bowen unsympathetically.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think Mr. Colville seems so very old?" asked Imogene
      anxiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, no. I had one from mother day before yesterday. What
      made you think so?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, yes, Mrs. Bowen," cried the girl, in surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It's a position of great responsibility in regard to a young
      lady. I can't have anything to reproach myself with
      afterward."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "What an idea! You've been loveliness itself, Mrs. Bowen!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I want you to listen to me, and answer me frankly, and
      not suspect my motives."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, how <i>could</i> I do that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Never mind!" cried Mrs. Bowen impatiently, almost angrily.
      "People can't help their suspicions! Do you think Mr. Morton
      cares for you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      The girl hung her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene, answer me!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "If I thought you were becoming interested in any one, it
      would be my duty to write to your mother and tell her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course; I should expect you to do it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course, I don't mean that any one would knowingly try to
      make you unhappy?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Men don't go about nowadays trying to break girls' hearts.
      But very good men can be thoughtless and selfish."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; I understand that," said Imogene, in a falling accent.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene sat silent, passing her hand across the front of her
      dress. The clock ticked audibly from the mantel.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course it makes me seem inhospitable, and distrustful,
      and detestable."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I never thought of accusing you," said the girl, slowly
      lifting her eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene sat still, with a sort of serious, bewildered look.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You shall have every proper opportunity of meeting any one
      you like."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And I shall be only too gl-glad to take back everything!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Have you nothing to say, Imogene?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I never thought of him in that way at all. I don't know what
      to say yet. It&#8212;confuses me. I&#8212;I can't imagine it.
      But if you think that he is trying to amuse
      himself&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I never said that!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, I know it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "He likes to make you talk, and to talk with you. But he is
      perfectly idle here, and&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen rose and ran suddenly from the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene remained sitting cold and still.
    </p>
    <p>
      No one had been named since they spoke of Mr. Morton.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XI"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XI
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the drama of the <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> 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 <i>lucerna</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It isn't snowing at all. What made you think that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps I was drowsing over my book and dreamed it. We
      become very strange and interesting studies to ourselves as
      we live along."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then you're not homesick for Haddam East Village?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then you have no reproach for feeble-spirited
      fellow-citizens who abandon their native climate and come to
      live in Italy?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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&#8212;&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why not? It is very unimportant where one dies. A moment
      after your breath is gone you are in exile for ever&#8212;or
      at home for ever."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well," he asked, "how did you enjoy the veglione?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you go back?" demanded Colville, in some amaze.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes. I felt that my experience was incomplete without
      some knowledge of how the Carnival ended at such a place."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh! And do you still feel that Savonarola was mistaken?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville, with a smile; "I daresay the Carnival
      at Haddam East Village was quite another tiling."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Have you?" asked Colville, opening his eyes, in suppressed
      surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville could not deny himself the pleasure of saying,
      "Well, not the highest, I suppose."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Mr. Waters, in apparent unconsciousness of the
      irony. "But I think the Church has made a mistake in
      condemning the theatre <i>in toto</i>. 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&#8212;jealousy in its anguish, revenge glutting
      itself, envy eating its heart, hopeless love&#8212;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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Am I still a young man?" interrupted Colville sadly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You are fifty, I presume?" suggested Mr. Waters, in a
      leading way.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not very near&#8212;only too near," laughed Colville. "I'm
      forty-one."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," Colville assented, with a certain discomfort.
    </p>
    <p>
      "But to be truly young at forty," resumed Mr. Waters, "a man
      should be already married."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville said nothing, but he experienced a mixed feeling of
      amusement, of repulsion, and of curiosity at this.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;lost
      her. It was a great while ago."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, that's true," answered Colville gravely. "It's apt to
      be a mistake and a wrong."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, not always&#8212;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&#8212;ah!
      true! I think you told me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Colville. "Have we spoken of her? But I have seen
      her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And was the little one well?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Very much better."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville. "Mrs. Bowen always had that gentle
      manner. I used to know her here as a girl a great while ago."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you? I wonder you allowed her to become Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It isn't too late yet," said Mr. Waters, with open
      insinuation.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;very respected and recognised social
      figures,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;in fact, one heard no other,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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, '<i>Grazie; sto bene</i>.'"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, that's all changed now."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; I've seen the tea, and I haven't heard the joke."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>him</i> 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 <i>one</i> alone." She
      laughed and shook her head in a way that had once been arch
      and lively, but that was now puckery and infirm&#8212;it is
      affecting to see these things in women&#8212;and welcomed the
      old gentleman who came up and superseded Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "How is Effie to-day?" he asked quickly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, quite well," said Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't see Mrs. Bowen," he ventured further.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," answered the girl, still very lifelessly; "I came with
      Mrs. Fleming." She looked about the room as if not to look at
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      He now perceived a distinct intention to snub him. He smiled.
      "Have you seen the pictures? There are two or three really
      lovely ones."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mrs. Fleming will be here in a moment, I suppose," said
      Imogene evasively, but not with all her first coldness.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Let us steal a march on her," said Colville briskly. "When
      she comes you can tell her that I showed you the pictures."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know," faltered the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps it isn't necessary you should," he suggested.
    </p>
    <p>
      She glanced at him with questioning trepidation.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The respective duties of chaperone and
      <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i> are rather undefined. Where the
      chaperone isn't there to command, the
      <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i> isn't there to obey. I suppose
      you'd know if you were at home?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Let me imagine myself at a loan exhibition in Buffalo. Ah!
      that appeal is irresistible. You'll come, I see."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;coaxingly, ironically.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The chaperone is never there when you come back with the
      <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>," said Colville. "It seems to
      be the nature of the chaperone."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene turned very grave. "I think I ought to go to her,"
      she murmured.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no; she ought to come to you; I stand out for
      <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>'s rights."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I suppose she will come directly."
    </p>
    <p>
      "She sees me with you; she knows you are safe."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, it's quite bad enough to see them," replied Colville
      frivolously.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think a company of gentlemen with their hats off look very
      queer, don't you?" she asked, after another interval.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Though there is not very much to choose. We're a
      queer-looking set, anyway."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, there are the Inglehart boys!" cried the girl, with a
      flash of excitement.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene followed them with eager eyes. "Oh," she sighed,
      "shouldn't you like to be an artist?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I should, very much."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I beg your pardon; I forgot. I knew you were an
      architect."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I should say I used to be, if you hadn't objected to my
      perfects and preterits."
    </p>
    <p>
      What came next seemed almost an accident.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Have you been trying to amuse me?" he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no. I thought&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, <i>no</i> 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&#8212;I didn't mean&#8212;I didn't intend to say
      anything&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "But you have said something&#8212;something that surprises
      me from <i>you</i>, and hurts me. I wish to know whether you
      say it from yourself."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know&#8212;yes. That is, not&#8212;&#8212;Oh, I wish
      Mrs. Fleming&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      She looked as if another word of pursuit would put it beyond
      her power to control herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Let me take you to Mrs. Fleming," said Colville, with
      freezing <i>hauteur</i>; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "DEAR MR. COLVILLE,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I am not ashamed of writing this, <i>whatever</i> you think,
      and I will sign my name in full. IMOGENE GRAHAM."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I have come to get you to help me out of trouble."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, indeed!" said Colville. "Perhaps you can tell me who put
      the idea into her head?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; I did."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      At last, "I suppose you had your reasons," he said simply.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't like the phrase either; I didn't invent it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You used it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then you mean to say that you believe I've been trifling
      with the feelings of this child?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I certainly have. I have tried to make Effie Bowen like me
      too."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen passed this over in serenity that he felt was not
      far from contempt.
    </p>
    <p>
      He gave a laugh that did not express enjoyment.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You have no right to laugh!" she cried, losing herself a
      little, and so making her first gain upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It appears not. Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do
      about this letter?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "That is for you to decide." She recovered herself, and lost
      ground with him in proportion.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I thought perhaps that since you were able to judge my
      motives so clearly, you might be able to advise me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm obliged to you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But you are as much to blame as if you had."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And perhaps I'm as much to blame as if I had really wronged
      somebody?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It's rather paradoxical. You don't wish me to see her any
      more?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I haven't any wish about it; you must not <i>say</i> that I
      have," said Mrs. Bowen, with dignity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville smiled. "May I <i>ask</i> if you have?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not for myself."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You put me on very short allowance of conjecture."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no. You shall not touch me."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mr. Colville came here with your letter, Imogene."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Imogene faintly. "Do you think I oughtn't to have
      written it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, it makes no difference now. He is going away from
      Florence."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes?" breathed the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I spoke openly with him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I didn't spare him. I made him think I hated and despised
      him."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene was silent. Then she said, "I know that whatever you
      have done, you have acted for the best."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, I have a right that you should say that&#8212;I have a
      right that you should always say it. I think he has behaved
      very foolishly, but I don't blame him&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No! I was to blame."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't <i>know</i> that he was to blame, and I won't let
      you think he was."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, he is the best man in the world!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I <i>know</i> it, Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And I wouldn't even shake hands with him when he was going;
      I&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene," she said at last, "I wish you to promise me one
      thing."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not to write to Mr. Colville again."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no; indeed I won't, Mrs. Bowen!" The girl came up to
      kiss her; Mrs. Bowen turned her cheek.
    </p>
    <p>
      wish you to promise me this only because you don't feel sure
      of yourself about him. If you care for him&#8212;if you think
      you care for him&#8212;then I leave you perfectly free."
    </p>
    <p>
      The girl looked up, scared. "No, no; I'd rather you wouldn't
      leave me free&#8212;you mustn't; I shouldn't know what to
      do."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Very well, then," said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      They both waited a moment, as if each were staying for the
      other to speak. Then Imogene asked, "Is he&#8212;going soon?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;as far from Florence as he can. I should think he
      would <i>hate</i> the place."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;<i>I</i> have helped to
      make it so! O Mrs. Bowen, perhaps it's <i>I</i> who have been
      trifling with <i>him</i> Trying to make him believe&#8212;no,
      not trying to do that, but letting him see that I
      sympathised&#8212;Oh, do you think I have?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no."
    </p>
    <p>
      "As you say, I warned you from the first."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes; you did."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I couldn't do more than hint; it was too much to
      expect&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, yes, yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And if you couldn't take my hints, I was helpless."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; I see it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>had</i> said too
      much&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I didn't care for his admiration. I admired
      <i>him</i>&#8212;and pitied him."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>forced</i> 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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XII"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XII
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some one rapped at his door. He called out "<i>Avanti</i>!"
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I beg your pardon," said the visitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mr. Waters! Is it possible?" cried Colville, feeling
      something fateful in the chance. "I was just going to see
      you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm fortunate in meeting you, then. Shall we go to my room?"
      he asked, at a hesitation in Colville's manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, I did&#8212;sit down, please&#8212;but I find myself
      obliged to cut my stay short. Won't you take off your coat?"
      he asked, taking off his own.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville gave a very uncomfortable laugh. "Why, the fact is,
      I'm not off so very soon unless you help me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah?" returned the old gentleman, with polite interest.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, don't excuse yourself to me, unless you wish to embitter
      my shame. must try to run my face with the landlord," said
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no," said Mr. Waters gently. "Is there such haste as all
      that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, I must go at once."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, I can't possibly stay; I must go to-night," cried
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      The old gentleman looked at him with friendly interest.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The fact is," Colville proceeded, as if he had been
      encouraged to do so, "I have had the misfortune&#8212;yes,
      I'm afraid I've had the fault&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh," said Colville, with disagreeable sensation, "perhaps
      she told you why I was going."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville turned very red. "What in the world do you mean? Do
      you imagine that I have been offering myself to Mrs. Bowen?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Wasn't it that which you wished to&#8212;which you said you
      would like to tell me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;at least we can't be acquaintances."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It was what I supposed you had been telling
      me&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thank you. But I shall not go to Rome for some years. Shall
      you come back on your way in the spring?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, I shall not come to Florence again," said Colville
      sadly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The little man set his head on one side.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, well, occupy the room until Monday, then," he cried
      hospitably. "It is quite at your disposition. You will not
      want the omnibus?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>Rigoletto</i>, but it was all Mrs. Bowen
      and Imogene Graham to Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "You have amused yourself this evening?
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, very much."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I am glad. There is a letter for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      "A letter! Where?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I sent it to your room. It came just before midnight."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XIII"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XIII
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen sat before the hearth in her <i>salon</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen met this feebleness promptly. "It isn't likely to
      be known. But we are not driving Mr. Colville away."
    </p>
    <p>
      "He is going."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; he said he would go."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Don't you believe he will go?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I believe he will do what he says."
    </p>
    <p>
      "He has been very kind to us all; he has been as
      <i>good!</i>"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;<i>so</i>. I&#8212;I
      don't know what to think any more. Once it was clear, but now
      I'm not sure; no, I'm not sure."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not sure about what?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think I am the one to go away, if any one."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You know you can't go away," said Mrs. Bowen, with weary
      patience.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, of course not. Well, I shall never see any one like
      him."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," the girl went on, as if uttering a hopeless reverie.
      "He made every moment interesting. He was always thinking of
      us&#8212;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&#8212;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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene!" Mrs. Bowen cried out, but quelled herself again.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;perhaps&#8212;&#8212;" 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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "That other one?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; you know what I mean: the one who behaved so badly to
      him before."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;of comparison&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no," wailed the girl, "there <i>is</i> none. I feel
      that. She had nothing to warn her&#8212;he hadn't suffered
      then; he was young; he was able to bear it&#8212;you said it
      yourself, Mrs. Bowen. But now&#8212;<i>now</i>, 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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>didn't</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, I have never complained of you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then why can't you tell me now what you think best?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Because there is nothing to be done. It is all over."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But if it were not, would you tell me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Because I&#8212;couldn't."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I take back my promise not to write to Mr. Colville. I
      am going to ask him to stay."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You know the position it places you in?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "What position?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Has he offered himself to you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No!" the girl's face blazed.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then, after what's passed, this is the same as offering
      yourself to him."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene turned white. "I must write to him, unless you forbid
      me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;&#8212;" She stopped, before sitting down, and
      looked back over her shoulder at Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said the girl, who had also risen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I will write to Mr. Colville for you, and render the
      proceeding as little objectionable as possible."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene made no reply. She stood motionless while Mrs. Bowen
      wrote.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is this what you wished?" asked the latter, offering the
      sheet:&#8212;&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "Dear Mr. Colville,&#8212;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yours very sincerely,
    </p>
    <p>
      "Evalina Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, that will do," gasped Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You shall be served," said the porter, with fortitude.
    </p>
    <p>
      As Mrs. Bowen turned, Imogene ran toward her with clasped
      hands. "Oh, how merciful&#8212;how good&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen shrank back. "Don't touch me, Imogene, please!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Dear Mrs. Bowen,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yours sincerely, THEODORE COLVILLE."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Send it the first thing in the morning, then," said
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It's just as I wish it, Mrs. Bowen," she said, in a low key
      of impassioned resolution. "<i>Now</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;very doubtful."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps," said Mr. Waters; "I haven't yet thought it over.
      The worst thing about suicide&#8212;and this must always rank
      it below political assassination&#8212;is that its interest
      is purely personal. No man ever kills himself for the good of
      others."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Your way, if you will let me," replied Colville. "I was
      going to your house to ask you to take a walk with me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I shall be ashamed to complain if I do."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And you didn't go to Rome after all?" said Mr. Waters.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Shall you, indeed?" asked Colville, with a grateful stir of
      the heart. "It's very nice of you to say that."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And is the past such good company always?".
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did they all fail? I thought some of the bad fellows had a
      pretty fair worldly success?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "The blossom of decay."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh! what black pessimism!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But never quite?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, it isn't too late yet."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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
      <i>frate</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, they <i>had</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "How will it be with you, then, when you have read us 'the
      riddle of the painful earth'?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I take back my charge of pessimism," said Colville. "You are
      an optimist of the deepest dye."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't stand those fellows, to-day. They seem to feel such
      a smirk satisfaction at having got out of it all."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; Nature isn't puritan," replied the old minister.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not at Haddam East Village?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; there less than here; for she's had to make a harder
      fight for her life there."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, then you believe in Nature&#8212;you're a friend of
      Nature?" asked Colville, following the lines of an oily swirl
      in the current with indolent eye.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And what about the unlucky fellows who haven't got the
      direction, or haven't kept it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "They had better go back to it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But if Nature herself seemed to change her mind about you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, you mean persons of weak will. They are a great curse to
      themselves and to everybody else."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And in evil? Perhaps the evil, attempted and relinquished,
      turns into good."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Good-bye," said the minister. "Perhaps we shall meet in
      Florence again."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no. Whatever happens, that won't."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But he shook himself together into the shape of resolution,
      however slight and transient. "I must do <i>something</i> 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 <i>said</i> I would."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XIV"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XIV
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville opened his eyes to look after them, when a voice
      that he knew called out, "Why, it is Mr. Colville!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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 Imogens 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had to come forward, and put on the conventional delight
      of a gentleman meeting lady friends.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, don't apologise!" cried the old thing, with ready
      enjoyment of his tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "In Turin! Are you going away from Florence?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm going home."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, did <i>you</i> 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. <i>Why</i> are
      you going away? (You see I haven't reached them yet!) Are you
      tired of Florence already?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Colville passively; "Florence is tired of me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You're quite sure?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; there's no mistaking one of her sex on such a point."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I haven't the least idea."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is America fonder of you than Florence?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She's never told her love. I suspect it's merely that she's
      more used to me."
    </p>
    <p>
      They were walking, without any volition of his, down the
      slope of the broad avenue to the fountain, where he had
      already been.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "She has a headache," said Effie.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I'm sorry," returned Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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 <i>you</i> 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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, and with a single red anemone in your hand, so that I
      should know you without being obliged to put on my
      spectacles."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You divine everything, Mrs. Amsden," he said, giving her the
      flower.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "As far as the meadow yonder."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville helplessly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why are you going away?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why? Oh, I've accomplished the objects&#8212;or
      no-objects&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not quite that," returned Colville gently.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you know what you are saying, Imogene?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes!" said the girl, pouring all the intensity of her face
      into that whisper.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Even if there had been nothing said to make me go
      away&#8212;should you still wish me to stay?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;I deserved it; I deserved all she could say
      against me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;you were&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Trifling with you? How could you think that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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&#8212;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 <i>that</i> 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&#8212;if&#8212;you care for me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>call</i> happiness."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "What should I regret? I won't let you depreciate
      yourself&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;how different you are, too."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes. But you must be free."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What are they doing so long there?" asked Mrs. Amsden of
      Effie, putting her glasses to her eyes. "I can't see."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes. He's very nice."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville and Imogene returned, coming slowly across the
      loose, neglected grass toward the old woman's seat. She rose
      as they came up.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "There was no occasion for them," answered Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, very much," replied Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "If you like, I will do it for you, Mrs. Amsden. I'm going to
      see her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>creature</i>?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, that's asking a good deal."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "To tell you a thing honestly. How did you come here, Mrs.
      Amsden?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "In Mrs. Bowen's carriage. I sent it round from the Pitti
      entrance to the Porta Romana. It's waiting there now, I
      suppose."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I thought you had been corrupted, somehow. Your zeal is
      carriage-bought. It <i>is</i> a delightful vehicle. Do you
      think you could give me a lift home in it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, indeed. I've always a seat for you in my carriage. To
      Hotel d'Atene?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, to Palazzo Pinti."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;almost dramatic."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, call us a passage from a modern novel," suggested
      Colville, "if you're in the romantic mood. One of Mr.
      James's."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Shall you&#8212;tell her?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course. She must know without an instant's delay."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, yes; that is right. Oh!&#8212;Shall I go with you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; come!"
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XV"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XV
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;where I found
      your young people."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;" The trouble in her throat arrested her
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;in
      some physical sort. "Yes, and if she will let me stay with
      her, we are not going to part again."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen did not answer at once, and in the hush Colville
      heard the breathing of all three.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course," he said, "we wished you to know at once, and I
      came in with Imogene to tell you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What do you wish me," asked Mrs. Bowen, "to do?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will do whatever you think best."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; they put her in my charge. They will have to know.
      Shall I write to them?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, if you will."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, certainly."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thank you."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You know you have always been welcome here."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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"&#8212;the words, now that they were said,
      struck him as unfortunate, and even vulgar&#8212;"and I
      shouldn't wish to annoy you&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I understand. I think it will be&#8212;I have no doubt
      you will know how to manage all that. It isn't as if you were
      both&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Young?" asked Colville. "No; one of us is quite old enough
      to be thoroughly up in the <i>convenances</i>. We are
      qualified, I'm afraid, as far as that goes," he added
      bitterly, "to set all Florence an example of correct
      behaviour."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I mean, till you have heard from Imogene's mother."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I hadn't thought of that. Perhaps under the
      circumstances&#8212;" The tremor died out of the hand he
      held; it lay lax between his. "What do you say, Imogene?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't say anything. Whatever you think will be
      right&#8212;for me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wish to do what will seem right and fair to your mother."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;advise&#8212;You&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "What is it?&#8212;what is it, my poor girl?" he murmured.
      "Are you unhappy? Are you sorry? Let it all end, then!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no; it isn't that! But I am very unhappy&#8212;yes,
      very, very unhappy! Oh, I didn't suppose I should ever feel
      so toward any one. I hate her!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You hate her?" gasped Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, I hate her. And she&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no," said Colville soothingly; "that's just your fancy.
      You haven't harmed her, and you don't hate her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, yes, I do! You can't understand how I feel toward her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It only makes my badness worse, and makes me hate her more."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;" He
      stopped: the words had such a very hollow sound.
    </p>
    <p>
      She pushed herself from him, and dried her eyes. "Oh yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And, Imogene&#8212;perhaps&#8212;perhaps&#8212;Or, no; never
      mind, now. I must go away&#8212;" She looked at him,
      frightened but submissive. "But I will be back to-night, or
      perhaps to-morrow morning. I want to think&#8212;to give you
      time to think. I don't want to be selfish about you&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Isn't mamma coming at <i>all</i>?" 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
      <i>him</i>. 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 <i>is</i>
      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 <i>you've</i> been crying
      about, Imogene. <i>You've</i> got nothing to worry you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm not very well, Effie," returned the girl gently. "I
      haven't been well all day."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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>I</i> think it must be the drainage. If we keep on,
      I suppose we shall all have diphtheria. Don't you, Imogene?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," asserted the girl distractedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; it was very wrong."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I suppose Mr. Colville will have it if we do. That is, if he
      keeps coming here. Is he coming any more?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; he's coming to-morrow morning."
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>Is</i> he?" A smile flickered over the rueful face. "What
      time is he coming?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know exactly," said Imogene, listlessly stirring her
      coffee. "Some time in the forenoon."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you suppose he's going to take us anywhere?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes&#8212;I think so. I can't tell exactly."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You mustn't talk so of your mother, Effie."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; I wouldn't to <i>every</i>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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; he's very kind."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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>I</i> think Mr, Colville would make a good
      Saint Nicholas&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, better not tell him that," suggested Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think he wouldn't like it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, it would become him. How old do you suppose he is,
      Imogene? Seventy-five?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "What an idea!" cried the girl fiercely. "He's forty-one."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>porti&egrave;re</i>
      of the <i>salotto</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, mamma. I'll bring it to you myself."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thank you, dear," Mrs. Bowen called from within.
    </p>
    <p>
      The little girl softly pressed her hands together. "I
      <i>hope</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't, Effie," said Imogene. "I oughtn't to interfere with
      any of your mother's rules."
    </p>
    <p>
      The child sighed submissively and took the coffee that
      Giovanni brought to her. She and Imogene went into the
      <i>salotto</i> together. Mrs. Bowen was at her writing-desk.
      "You can bring the coffee here, Effie," she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Must I go to bed at once, mamma?" asked the child, setting
      the cup carefully down.
    </p>
    <p>
      The mother looked distractedly up from her writing. "No; you
      may sit up a while," she said, looking back to her writing.
    </p>
    <p>
      "How long, mamma?" pleaded the little girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, till you're sleepy. It doesn't matter <i>now</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      She went on writing; from time to time she tore up what she
      had written.
    </p>
    <p>
      Effie softly took a book from the table, and perching herself
      on a stiff, high chair, bent over it and began to read.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What made you take such an uncomfortable chair, Effie?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't see why any one should wish to be wakeful," sighed
      the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "FLORENCE, <i>March</i> 10, 18&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "Dear Mrs. Graham,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course I would rather not have had anything of the kind
      happen while 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.&#8212;Yours sincerely, EVALINA BOWEN."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene read the letter twice over, and then she said, "Why
      isn't he a society man?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "And how should his having been a newspaper editor be
      anything against him?"
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen lifted her face and stared at the girl in
      astonishment. "Who said it was against him?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You hint as much. The whole letter is against him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes! Every word! You make him out perfectly detestable. I
      don't know why you should hate <i>him</i>, He's done
      everything he could to satisfy you."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She isn't very happy to-night."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;we're
      perfectly demoralised!" It was one of the words she had
      picked up from Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      The quivering face in the glass broke in a passion of tears,
      and Effie sobbed herself to sleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene sat down at Mrs. Bowen's desk, and pushing her letter
      away, began to write.
    </p>
    <p>
      "FLORENCE, <i>March</i> 10, 18&#8212;.
    </p>
    <p>
      "DEAR MOTHER,&#8212;-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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I am a good deal excited to-night, and cannot write very
      clearly. But I will write soon again, and more at length.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps something will be decided by that time. With much
      love to father,
    </p>
    <p>
      "Your affectionate daughter,
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "DEAR DIARY,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I am engaged&#8212;yes!&#8212;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&#8212;I am ashamed to call her a
      girl&#8212;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&#8212;something like what I had
      read in a poem or a novel&#8212;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
      <i>he</i> 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 <i>must</i>
      have, however one despises them, I felt so <i>old</i> 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&#8212;don't you see, Di dear, how rich
      my reward would be?
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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? 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
      <i>welcome</i> criticism and opposition from any quarter. But
      I can see that <i>he</i> is very sensitive&#8212;it comes
      from his keen sense of the ridiculous&#8212;and if I suffer,
      it will be on account of this grand unselfish nature, and I
      shall be glad of that.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Your faithful JOURNAL.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "J."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said the girl coldly; "it will do very well. I don't
      wish to trouble you so much."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, how can you speak so to me? Do you think that I blame
      Mr. Colville? Is that it? I don't ask you&#8212;I shall never
      ask you&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XVI"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XVI
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene will be here in a moment," she said, with a
      naturalness that made him awkward and conscious.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;of Imogene's inexperience,
      and her remoteness from her family. I feel that I must in
      some sort protect her from herself. Yes&#8212;that is my
      idea. But 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&#8212;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"&#8212;he smiled
      ruefully&#8212;"there is such a thing as being so
      <i>dis</i>interested that one may seem <i>un</i>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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 yon 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm sorry, Mrs. Bowen, to do anything&#8212;say
      anything&#8212;that is painful to you," Colville began. "You
      know that I would give the world to please you&#8212;&#8212;"
      The words escaped him and left him staring at her,
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no! Not for you," she said scornfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thank you," said Colville vaguely.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;as you call
      it&#8212;except to keep her from regretting what she has
      done."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think I shall fail in that?" he demanded indignantly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can offer you no opinion. I can't tell what you will do."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I will relieve you of my presence," said Colville. "I've
      no wish to force anything upon you&#8212;least of all
      myself." He rose, and moved toward the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>too late</i> 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&#8212;freer. And we are to be as good friends as
      ever&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I mean simply that I do it for Imogene and not for you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I understand that you don't do it for me."
    </p>
    <p>
      At this moment Imogene appeared between the folds of the
      <i>porti&egrave;re</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Good morning," she returned half-inquiringly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No!" cried the girl impetuously; "don't go." Mrs. Bowen
      stopped. "I wish to speak with you&#8212;with you and Mr.
      Colville together. I wish to say&#8212;I don't know how to
      say it exactly; but I wish to know&#8212;You asked him last
      night, Mrs. Bowen, whether he wished to consider it an
      engagement?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I thought perhaps you would rather hear from your
      mother&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>wish</i> to be
      bound, if he is."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't quite know what you expect me to say."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>what</i> I
      hear."
    </p>
    <p>
      "There's no reason why you shouldn't meet," said Mrs. Bowen
      absently.
    </p>
    <p>
      "If you wish it to have the same appearance as an Italian
      engagement&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course, Mrs. Bowen," said the girl haughtily, "if it will
      be disagreeable to you to have it known&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen blushed delicately&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;in&#8212;such a thing."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps you would like all the more, then, to show her the
      deference of waiting for her consent."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Imogene, in the same effect of arrest.
    </p>
    <p>
      "When it isn't absolutely necessary," continued Colville.
      "Especially as you say there will be no opposition."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene!" said Colville, coming toward her.
    </p>
    <p>
      She dropped herself upon his shoulder. "Oh, why, why, why am
      I so miserable?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Miserable, Imogene!" he murmured, stroking her beautiful
      hair.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, yes! Utterly miserable! It must be because I'm unworthy
      of you&#8212;unequal every way. If you think so, cast me off
      at once. Don't be weakly merciful!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And now that it's all arranged, can't you be cheerful
      again?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You're satisfied with the way we've arranged it? Because
      if&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, perfectly&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Some one else?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You know! Mrs. Bowen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh! But I couldn't see that she was anxious to spare me. It
      occurred to me that she was concerned about your family."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It led up to the other! it's all the same thing."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; she knows how to make it seem so."
    </p>
    <p>
      don't understand this. Don't you think Mrs. Bowen likes you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She detests me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No!" said Colville, with generous fervour.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," cried the girl, "long before you knew me!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "And I know her to be the soul of honour," said Colville,
      ignoring the childish outburst. "Honour&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      The next time he came he again saw Mrs. Bowen alone before
      Imogene appeared. The conversation was confined to two
      sentences.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What is the matter?" she asked, pushing away from him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "With me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; you seem so excited."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Was Mrs. Bowen saying anything about me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not a word," said Colville, glad of getting back to the firm
      truth again, even if it were mere literality.
    </p>
    <p>
      "We have made it up," she said, her scrutiny changing to a
      lovely appeal for his approval. "What there was to make up."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Perhaps we oughtn't, if we're not engaged?" she suggested,
      with such utter trust in him as made his heart quake.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh," he sighed, from a complexity of feeling that no
      explanation could wholly declare, "we're engaged enough for
      that, I suppose."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, of course it will make a great deal of remark."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes; you must be prepared for that, Imogene," said
      Colville, with as much gravity as he could make comport with
      his actual position.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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&#8212;the youth you were robbed
      of&#8212;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&#8212;ever since I knew what happened to you here long
      ago&#8212;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&#8212;complete your destiny&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, say it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; it will make you think that I am anxious on my own
      account about appearances before people."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You poor child, I shall never think you are anxious on your
      own account about anything. What were you going to say?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, nothing! It was only&#8212;are you invited to the
      Phillipses' fancy ball?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville, silently making what he could of the
      diversion, "I believe so."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And are you going&#8212;did you mean to go?" she asked
      timidly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene did not smile. She faintly sighed. "Well, then, I
      won't go either."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you intend to go?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, of course you did, and it's very right you should. Did
      you want me to go?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It would bore you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't think they're half so pretty as yours; but they're
      more sincere."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "They appear to be rather an intricate kind of
      compliment&#8212;sort of <i>salsa agradolce</i>
      affair&#8212;tutti frutti style&#8212;species of moral
      mayonnaise."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Have I an ironical way? You were going to tell me something
      more about the fancy ball."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't care for it. I would rather talk about you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And I prefer the ball. It's a fresher topic&#8212;to me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes, I have. It seems to have turned the loveliest and
      wisest head in the world."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, do you really think so? I would give anything if you
      did."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Think I was pretty," she pleaded, with full eyes. "Do you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, but I think you are wise. Fifty per cent, of
      truth&#8212;it's a large average in compliments. What are you
      going to wear?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Wear? Oh! At the ball! Something Egyptian, I suppose. It's
      to be an Egyptian ball. Didn't you understand that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes. But I supposed you could go in any sort of dress."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You can't. You must go in some Egyptian character."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no. Be serious. Though I like you to joke, too. I shall
      always want you to joke. Shall you, always?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "There may be emergencies when I shall fail&#8212;like family
      prayers, and grace before meat, and dangerous sickness."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, of course. But I mean when we're together, and there's
      no reason why you shouldn't?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, at such times I shall certainly joke."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And before people, too! I won't have them saying that it's
      sobered you&#8212;that you used to be very gay, and now
      you're cross, and never say anything."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will try to keep it up sufficiently to meet the public
      demand."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "If I were to beat you a little in company, don't you think
      it would serve the same purpose?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no; be serious."
    </p>
    <p>
      "About joking?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, about me. I know that I'm very intense, and you must try
      to correct that tendency in me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will, with pleasure. Which of my tendencies are you going
      to correct?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You have none."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, then, neither have you. I'm not going to be outdone in
      civilities."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, if people could only hear you talk in this light way,
      and then know what <i>I</i> know!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no," she pleaded. "Don't laugh. There are girls that
      would give their eyes for it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "As pretty eyes as yours?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think they're nice?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, if they were not so mysterious."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mysterious?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No&#8212;did it, really?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I went home saying to myself that no girl could be so
      sincere as that Miss Graham seemed."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you say that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Words to that effect."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And what do you think now?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, I don't know. You had better go as the Sphinx."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene laughed in simple gaiety of heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      "How far we've got from the ball!" she said, as if the remote
      excursion were a triumph. "What shall we really go as?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Isis and Osiris."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Weren't they gods of some kind?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Little one-horse deities&#8212;not very much."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It won't do to go as gods of any kind. They're always
      failures. People expect too much of them."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville. "That's human nature under all
      circumstances. But why go to an Egyptian ball at all?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "All these things?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;they will understand&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, very much."
    </p>
    <p>
      "That shows how little you understand me. It's because I wish
      to <i>defy</i> the world&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene! Be as honest with yourself as you are with me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I <i>am</i> honest."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Look me in the eyes, then."
    </p>
    <p>
      She did so for an instant, and then hid her face on his
      shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You silly girl," he said. "What is it you really do wish?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wish there was no one in the world but you and me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, how delightful you are! They couldn't any of them talk
      like you."
    </p>
    <p>
      He had learned to follow the processes of her thought now.
      "Perhaps they can when they come to my age."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Because I expect to meet a young lady there&#8212;a very
      beautiful young lady."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But how shall you know her if she's disguised?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, I shall be disguised too, you know."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, what delicious nonsense you <i>do</i> talk! Sit down
      here and tell me what you are going to wear."
    </p>
    <p>
      She tried to pull him back to the sofa. "What character shall
      you go in?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, no," he said, resisting the gentle traction. "I can't; I
      have urgent business down-town."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh! Business in <i>Florence!"</i>
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, if I stayed, I should tell you what disguise I'm going
      to the ball in."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I knew it was that. What do you think would be a good
      character for me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know. The serpent of old Nile would be pretty good
      for you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Good-bye," said Colville, and went out.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, Mr. Colville!" she called, before he got to the outer
      door.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," he said, starting back.
    </p>
    <p>
      She met him midway of the dim corridor. "Only to&#8212;" She
      put her arms about his neck and sweetly kissed him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville went out into the sunlight feeling like some
      strange, newly invented kind of scoundrel&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What is the matter, Effie?" she demanded gaily.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Nothing."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes, there is."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Nothing that you will care for. As long as he's pleasant to
      you, you don't care what he does to me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What has he done to you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      A smile glittered through the little girl's tears; but she
      asked, "Do you think it would be very polite?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think Mr. Colville and Imogene are much more affectionate
      than they used to be," she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen started up on her elbow. "What do you mean,
      Effie?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, they're both so good to me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said her mother, dropping back to her pillow. "Both?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; he's the <i>most</i> affectionate."
    </p>
    <p>
      The mother turned her face the other way. "Then he must be,"
      she murmured.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What?" asked the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Nothing. I didn't know I spoke."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You mustn't talk of such things, Effie," said her mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XVII"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XVII
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why don't you have them so?" she asked. "All the
      <i>other</i> young men have. And you ought to wear a
      <i>boutonni&egrave;re</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I think a man looks rather silly in silk lapels at
      my&#8212;" 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why do you say 'Sir' to Mr. Colville?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>trattoria</i>, where
      he once dined with them.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      caf&eacute; he slept without scruple, selecting a corner seat
      for the purpose, and proportioning his <i>buonamano</i> to
      the indulgence of the <i>giovane</i>. He could not tell how
      long he slept at these places, but sometimes it seemed to him
      hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 caf&eacute;. 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Nothing," he answered. "But this climate is making me
      insupportably drowsy; or else the spring weather."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville tried to deny it; his incoherencies dissolved
      themselves in a yawn, which he did not succeed in passing for
      a careless laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It won't do," she said, as if speaking to herself; "no, it
      won't do."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, no matter," said Imogene. "It makes you ridiculous,
      going to all those silly places, and I'd rather give it up."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It isn't that. I know how good you are, and that you would
      do anything for me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oughtn't I?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Talk?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; they will begin to say that I had better stay with her
      a little more, if she isn't well."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, isn't Mrs. Bowen well?" asked Colville, with
      trepidation.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; she's miserable. Haven't you noticed?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She sees me so seldom now. I thought it was only her
      headaches&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;we're waiting
      for."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville got up. "This is ghastly! She mustn't do it!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "How can you help her doing it? If she thinks anything is
      right, she can't help doing it. Who could?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "She'd be all the more strenuous about it if it were
      disagreeable, and rather than accept any relief from
      <i>me</i> she would die."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is she&#8212;unkind to you?" faltered Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "She is only <i>too</i> kind. You can feel that she's
      determined to be so&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, I didn't know," sighed Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But how can you tell that it's distasteful, then?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She lets you feel it by&#8212;not saying anything about it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't see how&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;every one but you. It's very
      uncomfortable."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville, "it's uncomfortable."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And if I allude to letters from home, she merely presses her
      lips together. It's perfectly wretched."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Go away?" she palpitated. "What should I do?"
    </p>
    <p>
      The colours faded from his brilliant proposal. "Oh, I only
      meant till something was
      settled&#8212;determined&#8212;concluded; till this terrible
      suspense was over." He added hopelessly, "But nothing can be
      done!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I proposed," said Imogene, "that we should all go away. I
      suggested Via Reggio&#8212;the doctor said she ought to have
      sea air&#8212;or Venice; but she wouldn't hear of it. No; we
      must wait."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, we must wait," repeated Colville hollowly. "Then
      nothing can be done?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, haven't you said it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes&#8212;yes. I can't go away, and you can't. But
      couldn't we do something&#8212;get up something?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know what you mean."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I mean, couldn't we&#8212;amuse her somehow? help her to
      take her mind off herself?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; she seems to take everything amiss that I do," said
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I don't call it humbling. I&#8212;I should only be too
      happy if I could do <i>anything that was agreeable to
      her."</i>
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "There was nothing offensive. But if you pity her so much,
      why can't you pity me a little?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I didn't know anything was the matter with you. I thought
      you were enjoying yourself&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "If you like, I will talk to you on the subject," Colville
      essayed, in dreary jest.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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>I</i> don't."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No! It's very strange. There's only one explanation. You
      don't care for me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not care for you!" cried Colville, thinking of his
      sufferings in the past fortnight.
    </p>
    <p>
      "And I would have made any&#8212;<i>any</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 if. I dare say it will be different; I've no doubt
      we can get her to look at me in some brighter light.
      I&#8212;" 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville pensively; "there's nothing I won't
      <i>propose</i> doing for people."
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <i>You</i> 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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville did not venture any reply to a demand evidently
      addressed to her own conscience.
    </p>
    <p>
      But when she asked if he really thought he had better go
      away, he said, "Oh no; that was a mistake."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Because, if you do, you shall&#8212;to punish me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "My dearest girl, why should I wish to punish you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Because I've been low and mean. Now I want you to do
      something for Mrs. 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is that so?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, be serious with me. I mean it. And I want to beg your
      pardon for something."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; what's that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Can't you guess?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You needn't have" your lapels silk-lined. You needn't wear
      <i>boutonni&egrave;res</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, but I've had the coat changed."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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,
      <i>do</i> you think I can ever be worthy of you? I
      <i>will</i> 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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no," pleaded Colville. "I am very comfortable. I don't
      need any compensation for the past. I need&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm not going," said Imogene briefly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes, you are. I'll come round to-morrow evening and see."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No. There are to be no more parties."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't endure them."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XVIII"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XVIII
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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 <i>salon</i>. 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not always?" asked Colville, with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;-weddings and funerals&#8212;I have been
      impressed with the advantage of the Anglican rite: it is the
      Church speaking to and for humanity&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "They appear to like the formalist too, as well as the form,"
      said Colville, with scorn not obviously necessary.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes; they must have everything in the concrete," said the
      old gentleman cheerfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wonder where Mr. Morton met Mrs. Bowen first," said
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Isn't that rather an unpleasant idea?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't like it," cried Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What do you mean?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "When I met him first at Mrs. Bowen's I used to think that it
      was Miss Graham in whom he was interested&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can assure you," interrupted Colville, "that she was never
      interested in him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;or do I&#8212;understand a young man?"
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville laughed harshly. "It isn't <i>quite</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      The old man glanced up at him with innocent slyness. "I
      prefer always to discuss these things in an impersonal way."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;or as bad." The
      defiance faded from his voice, which dropped to a note of
      weary sadness. "Yes, we're engaged&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;I hardly know
      how&#8212;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&#8212;the least cruel&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      He became aware that his self-abnegation was taking the
      character of self-pity, and he stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;if you were younger; but the chances of
      final happiness are great&#8212;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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>The Marble Faun</i>, 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 <i>The Marble Faun</i> with
      photographs; it surprised him that she seemed to find
      something novel and brilliant in the idea.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Nothing. Just talk," she said, making him fast in a corner
      of the sofa by crouching tight against him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What about? About which is the pleasantest season?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no; we've talked about that so often. Besides, of course
      you'd say spring, now that it's coming on so nicely."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; I know. But it's very nice having the flowers, too. The
      grass was all full of daisies to-day&#8212;perfectly powdered
      with them."
    </p>
    <p>
      "To-day? Where?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Be quiet, Effie," said her mother, but she submitted.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I hope you're better for your drive to-day, Mrs. Bowen.
      Effie has been telling me about it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "We stayed out a long time. Yes, I think the air did me good;
      but I'm not an invalid, you know."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm feeling a little fagged. And the weather was tempting. I
      suppose you've been taking one of your long walks."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "A good many people are feeling rather languid, I believe,"
      said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I hope you'll get away from Florence," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh," she returned, with a faint flush, "I'm afraid Imogene
      exaggerated that a little." She added, "You are very good."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I should imagine that Venice would be good for you," he
      said.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It's still very harsh there, I hear. No; when we leave
      Florence, I think we will go to Switzerland."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, not to Madame Schebres's," pleaded the child, turning
      upon her.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, not to Madame Schebres," consented the mother. She
      continued, addressing Colville: "I was thinking of Lausanne.
      Do you know Lausanne at all?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Only from Gibbon's report. It's hardly up to date."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      This idea interested the child. "Waking new!" she repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; perfectly made over. You wake up another person.
      Shouldn't you think that would be nice?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, he has talent," said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;scruple or rancour, whichever it might
      be&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah! that leaves me out," said Colville, who had caught sight
      of Effie's fallen countenance.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no. How is that? It leaves Effie out."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "We could take her between us, Mrs. Bowen," suggested
      Imogene. "The back seat is wide."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then the party is made up," said Colville, "and Effie hasn't
      demeaned herself by asking to go where she wasn't invited."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why don't you scold me?" she asked. "I have neglected you
      the whole evening."
    </p>
    <p>
      "How have you neglected me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "How? Ah! if you don't know&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      She seemed uncertain of his intention, and then satisfied of
      its simplicity.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Isn't it pleasant to have Mrs. Bowen in the old mood again?"
      he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is she in the old mood?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, yes. Haven't you noticed how cordial she is?
    </p>
    <p>
      "I thought she was rather colder than usual."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, if you saw nothing&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; and I think you must be mistaken. She never speaks of
      you without praising you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Does she speak of me?" asked the girl, with her honest eyes
      wide open upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why, no," Colville acknowledged. "Come to reflect, it's I
      who speak of you. But how&#8212;how is she cold with you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I dare say it's a delusion of mine. Perhaps I'm cold
      with her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then don't be so, my dear! Be sure that she's your
      friend&#8212;true and good. Good night."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is it all for me?" she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "For the whole obliging and amiable world," he answered
      gaily.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XIX"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XIX
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      The next time Colville came he found himself alone with
      Imogene, who asked him what he had been doing all day.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, living along till evening. What have you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Does he?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes. Do you think something of the kind would be good for
      me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, if you thirst for conquest. But I should prefer to rest
      on my laurels if I were you."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene did not smile. "Mr. Morton thinks I should enjoy a
      course of Kingsley. He says he's very earnest."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, immensely. But aren't you earnest enough already, my
      dear?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think I'm too earnest?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; I should say you were just right."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You know better than that. I wish you would criticise me
      sometimes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I'd rather not."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, you might criticise back, and I shouldn't like that."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then you don't approve of a course of Kingsley?" asked the
      girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Does that follow? But if you're going in for earnestness,
      why don't you take up a course of Carlyle?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think that would be better than Kingsley?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Not a bit. But Carlyle's so earnest that he can't talk
      straight."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't make out what you mean. Wouldn't you like me to
      improve?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I should wish to do it to&#8212;to be more worthy of you,"
      grieved the girl, as if deeply disappointed at his frivolous
      behaviour.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You think, don't you, that we oughtn't to let a day pass
      without storing away some
      thought&#8212;suggestion&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, there's no hurry," he said lazily. "Life is rather a
      long affair&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Very well, then," said Imogene. "I shall not begin
      Kingsley."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will do what <i>you</i> say."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, but I say nothing."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I will do nothing."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Isn't there to be any Effie, to-night?" he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No. She has been up too much of late. And I wished to speak
      with you&#8212;about Imogene."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville, not very eagerly. At that moment he
      could have chosen another topic.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It is time that her mother should have got my letter. In
      less than a fortnight we ought to have an answer."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well?" said Colville, with a strange constriction of the
      heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Her mother is a person of very strong character; her husband
      is absorbed in business, and defers to her in everything."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It isn't an uncommon American situation," said Colville,
      relieving his tension by this excursion.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;she sees you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I could hardly blame her for that," he answered
      submissively.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It isn't a question of that," said Mrs. Bowen. "It's a
      question of&#8212;others. Mr. Morton was here before you
      came, and I know he was interested in Imogene&#8212;I am
      certain of it. He has come back, and he sees no reason why he
      should not renew his attentions."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No&#8212;o&#8212;o," faltered Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wish you to realise the fact."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But what would you&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      He was long and miserably silent. At last, "Did you ever
      think," he asked, "did you ever suppose&#8212;that is to say,
      did you ever suspect that&#8212;she&#8212;that Imogene
      was&#8212;at all interested in him?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think she was&#8212;at one time," said Mrs. Bowen
      promptly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville sighed, with a wandering disposition to whistle.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, I wish you wanted to know as <i>my</i> 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&#8212;" 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&#8212;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&#8212;I <i>won't</i>&#8212;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&#8212;some rights. You shall receive me as a
      friend, or not at all! How can I live if you&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      She had been making little efforts as if to rise; now she
      forced herself to her feet, and ran from the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know; I think not," answered Colville stupidly,
      standing where he had risen.
    </p>
    <p>
      She hastened questioning toward him. "What is the matter?
      Isn't she well?"
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Morton's face expressed a polite share in her anxiety.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes; quite, I believe," Colville replied.
    </p>
    <p>
      "She heard Effie call, I suppose," suggested the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, yes; I think so; that is&#8212;yes. I must be going.
      Good night."
    </p>
    <p>
      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. Morion 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She did not seem surprised or concerned at that. "Imogene, I
      have been talking to Mr. Colville about you and Mr. Morton."
    </p>
    <p>
      The girl started and turned pale.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It is almost time to hear from your mother, and she may
      consent to your engagement. Then you must be prepared to
      act."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Act?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "If your mother consents, you will feel bound to Mr.
      Colville?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "And if she refuses?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "He has my word. I will keep my word to him," replied Imogene
      huskily. "Nothing shall make me break it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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. do. He is in love with you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh," moaned the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; you can't deny it. And it's cruel, it's treacherous, to
      let him go on thinking that you are free."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will never see him again."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah! that isn't enough. He has a claim to know why. I will
      not let him be treated so."
    </p>
    <p>
      They were both silent. Then, "What did Mr. Colville say?"
      asked Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "He? I don't know that he said anything. He&#8212;&#8212;"
      Mrs. Bowen stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene rose from her chair.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will not let him tell Mr. Morton. It would be too
      indelicate."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And shall you let it go on so?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No. I will tell him myself."
    </p>
    <p>
      "How will you tell him?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will tell him if he speaks to me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You will let it come to that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "There is no other way. I shall suffer more than he."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But you will deserve to suffer, and your suffering will not
      help him."
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene trembled into her chair again.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You will speak to him?" faltered the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And how will that help? He must have some explanation, and I
      will have to make it. What shall it be?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <i>This</i> time <i>he</i>
      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! could see that
      he was unhappy, as I did once! If I could see that he was at
      all different since&#8212;since&#8212;&#8212;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&#8212;no, Mrs. Bowen,
      do you think he cares for me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Bowen turned white; she did not speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;Or, no! If it is true, tell me that!
      <i>That</i> would be real mercy."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XX"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XX
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, that is it," said Imogene, to whom Mrs. Bowen hastened
      with the despatch. "Why should she have telegraphed to
      <i>you</i>?" she asked coldly, but with a latent fire of
      resentment in her tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You must ask her when she comes," returned Mrs. Bowen, with
      all her gentleness. "It won't be long now."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "What shall you do about this?" she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do about it? Oh, I will think. I will try not to trouble
      you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will do whatever you wish."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thank you."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen left the room, but she turned immediately to
      re-open the door she had closed behind her.
    </p>
    <p>
      "We were to have gone to Fiesole to-morrow," she said
      inquiringly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "It's too late to-day," said Mrs. Bowen quietly. "I will
      write to remind the gentlemen."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thank you. I wish we could have gone to-day."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You can have the carriage if you wish to drive anywhere,"
      said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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>I</i> think Imogene
      is acting very strangely, for <i>her</i>; don't you, mamma?
      It seems as if going with those Guicciardi girls just once
      had spoiled her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Effie had stretched out over Colville's lap, and with her
      elbow sunk deep in his knee, was renting her chin in her hand
      and taking the facts of the landscape thoroughly in. "Do they
      have just a week?" she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Wouldn't they?" murmured the child, in dreamy sympathy with
      this belated peach-blow.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, that's what people say. In America it would be allowed
      to come out any time. It's a free country."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "With what?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You don't really mean that one shouldn't come to Italy as
      well informed as possible?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, I did," said Colville, "but I don't."
    </p>
    <p>
      The young man pondered this, and Imogene started up with an
      air of rescuing them from each other&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you ever hear of Gratiano when you were in Venice?" she
      asked Mr. Morton.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Is he one of their new water-colourists?" returned the young
      man. "I heard they had quite a school there now."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      The young man laughed. "Oh, in the <i>Merchant of
      Venice</i>!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No other," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I confess," said Mrs. Bowen, "that I <i>am</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Don't mind <i>us</i>," 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&#8212;What place is this?" he
      asked of the coachman.
    </p>
    <p>
      "San Domenico."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;except
      Effie&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You can send a cheque to the Pia Casa," said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, there's very little to tell," answered Colville.
      "They're mighty close people, and always keep themselves very
      much <i>to</i> 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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It would be splendid."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;they always
      show you their tombs."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Will they in Fiesole?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "How you always like to burrow into the past!" interrupted
      Imogene.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      The girl's face flushed. "Then no one else can understand
      you?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Apparently not. I am the great American <i>incompris</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I'm sorry for you," she returned feebly; and, in fact,
      sarcasm was not her strong point.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wonder how it looks from the top?" Imogene asked this of
      Colville, with more meaning than seemed to belong to the
      question properly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Theodore, I want to tell you something," she said abruptly.
      "I have heard from home."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes?" he replied, in a tone in which he did his best to
      express a readiness for any fate.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Mother has telegraphed. She is coming out. She is on her way
      now. She will be here very soon."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville did not know exactly what to say to these
      passionately consecutive statements. "Well?" he said at last.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well"&#8212;she repeated his word&#8212;"what do you intend
      to do?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "If she should refuse?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do <i>you</i> wish nothing?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Nothing but your happiness."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Nothing but my happiness!" she retorted. "What is my
      happiness to me? Have I ever sought it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't say," he answered; "but if I did not think you would
      find it&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      The experienced and sophisticated man&#8212;for that in no
      ill way was what Colville was&#8212;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&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      Imogene rose to her feet as in some turmoil of thought or
      emotion that would not suffer her to remain quiet.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "They are sketching you," said Colville, and she sank
      compliantly into her seat again.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I have no doubt for myself&#8212;no," she said, as if there
      had been no interruption.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't think that; but I thought&#8212;I didn't know
      but&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "What?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Nothing, now." Her lips were quivering; he could see her
      struggle for self-control, but he could not see it unmoved.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Poor child!" he said, putting out his hand toward her.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Don't take my hand; they're all looking," she begged.
    </p>
    <p>
      He forbore, and they remained silent and motionless a little
      while, before she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then we are promised to each other, whatever happens," she
      said.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She said that I ought to do so."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And did you say you would?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know. But I suppose I ought to tell him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't wish you to!" cried the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You don't wish me to tell him?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; I will not have it!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, very well; it's much easier not. But it seems to me that
      it's only fair to him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Did you think of that yourself?" she demanded fiercely.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I knew it!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think that I am flirting with him?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Imogene!" exclaimed Colville reproachfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      "That's what you imply; that's what she implies."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You're very unjust to Mrs. Bowen, Imogene."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, you always defend her! It isn't the first time you've
      told me I was unjust to her."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't mean that you are willingly unjust, or could be so,
      to any living creature, least of all to her. But
      I&#8212;we&#8212;owe her so much; she has been so patient."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What do we owe her? How has she been patient?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She has overcome her dislike to me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, indeed!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "And&#8212;and I feel under obligation to her for&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You wish to tell Mr. Morton?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think I ought."
    </p>
    <p>
      "To please Mrs. Bowen! Tell him, then! You always cared more
      to please her than me. Perhaps you stayed in Florence to
      please her!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville ran forward to the side of the carriage. "Jump, Mrs.
      Bowen! jump, Effie! Imogene&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XXI"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XXI
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Where am I?" he asked, with what appeared to him very
      unnecessary feebleness of voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Have I been here a long time?" he asked, as if he had not
      heeded what she told him.
    </p>
    <p>
      "About a fortnight," answered Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "And Imogene&#8212;how long has she been away?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Since they knew you would get well."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I will see them any time," he said quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think you are strong enough?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;if
      you were going to be," he added. "Please send to them at
      once."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think so," said Colville, with a faint smile. "At least I
      can listen with fortitude."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      She seemed to expect that Colville would make some reply to
      this, and he said blankly, "Yes?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Colville again. "I'm afraid you didn't take her
      temperament and her youth into account, and that she
      disappointed you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, no, no," he cried. "Anything but that. My conduct has
      been selfish and shameful. If you could understand
      all&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I think I do understand all&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no; don't say that," pleaded Colville. "I really can't
      stand it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Dimly," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I found you very sick, and I found my daughter frantic at
      the error which she had discovered in
      herself&#8212;discovered too late, as she felt." Mrs. Graham
      hesitated, and then added abruptly, "She had found out that
      she did not love you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Didn't love me?" repeated Colville feebly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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
      <i>must</i> love you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Poor girl! poor child! I see, I see."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;that any one could feel&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, you needn't! you needn't! Poor, poor child!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, a child indeed. If it had not been for the pity I felt
      for her&#8212;But no matter about that. She saw at last that
      if your heroic devotion to her"&#8212;Colville did his best
      to hang his pillowed head for shame&#8212;"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
      <i>demand</i>"&#8212;Mrs. Graham, with all her poise and
      calm, was rising to the hysterical key&#8212;"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&#8212;" Mrs. Graham pressed her lips together, and her
      eyes shone.
    </p>
    <p>
      "She is free," said Colville, and with the words a mighty
      load rolled from his heart. "There is no need to demand
      anything."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I know."
    </p>
    <p>
      "There hasn't been an hour, an instant, during&#8212;since
      I&#8212;we&#8212;spoke together that I wouldn't have released
      her if I could have known what you tell me now."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Of course!&#8212;of course!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I have had my fears&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Naturally. And what added to her wretchedness was the
      suspicion at the bottom of all that she had somehow forced
      herself upon you&#8212;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 <i>me</i> to
      know it. And allow me to say, Mr. Colville, that it would
      have been far kinder in you&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, <i>think,</i> my dear madam!" he exclaimed. "How
      <i>could</i> I?"
    </p>
    <p>
      She did think, evidently, and when she spoke it was with a
      generous emotion, in which there was no trace of pique.
    </p>
    <p>
      "You couldn't. You have done right; I feel that, and I will
      trust you to say anything you will to my daughter."
    </p>
    <p>
      "To your daughter? Shall I see her?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She came with me. She wished to beg your forgiveness."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?&#8212;for it would be nothing else. What do you
      think? Will it do her any good hereafter? I don't care for
      myself."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know what to think," said Mrs. Graham. "She is a
      strange child. She may have some idea of reparation."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>pray</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XXII"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XXII
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 Villa 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bowen came in to get her. "Why, is she asleep?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes. Don't take her yet," said Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "We shall have another hot day to-morrow," said Mrs. Bowen at
      length. "I hope you will find your room comfortable."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes. But I haven't decided where to go yet."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Should you like some general expression of my gratitude for
      all you've done for me, Mrs. Bowen?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; I would rather not. It has been a great
      pleasure&#8212;to Effie."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      She made no answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      "When you are gone, I shall have to make the most of Mr.
      Waters," he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      "He is going to stop all summer, I believe."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you like it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      A few feet clapping by on the pavement below alone broke the
      hush.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Sometimes I feel very tired of it all, and want to get
      home," sighed Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, so do I."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't believe it's right staying away from the country so
      long." People often say such things in Europe.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, I don't either, if you've got anything to do there."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You can always make something to do there."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Mrs. Bowen pensively.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I heard just such singing before I fell asleep the night
      after that party at Madame Uccelli's, and it filled me with
      fury."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why should it do that?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't know. It seemed like voices from our
      youth&#8212;Lina."
    </p>
    <p>
      She had no resentment of his use of her name in the tone with
      which she asked: "Did you hate that so much?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; the loss of it."
    </p>
    <p>
      They both fetched a deep breath.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The Uccellis have a villa near the baths of Lucca," said
      Mrs. Bowen. "They have asked me to go."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think of going?" inquired Colville. "I've always
      fancied it must be pleasant there."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No; I declined. Sometimes I think I will just stay on in
      Florence."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;&nbsp; "'And deepening through their silent
      spheres,<br>
      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Heaven over heaven rose the night,'"
    </p>
    <p><br>
      he quoted. "It's wonderful! Do you remember how I used to
      read <i>Mariana in the South</i> to you and poor Jenny? How
      it must have bored her! What an ass I was!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes," said Mrs. Bowen breathlessly, in sympathy with his
      reminiscence rather than in agreement with his
      self-denunciation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville broke into a laugh, and then she began to laugh to;
      but not quite willingly as it seemed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Effie started from her sleep. "What&#8212;what is it?" she
      asked, stretching and shivering as half-wakened children do.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Bed-time," said her mother promptly, taking her hand to lead
      her away. "Say good-night to Mr. Colville."
    </p>
    <p>
      The child turned and kissed him. "Good night," she murmured.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you always kiss Mr. Colville good-night?" asked her
      mother when she began to undo her hair for her in her room.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Sometimes. Don't you think it's nice?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes; nice enough."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville sat by the window a long time thinking Mrs. Bowen
      might come back; but she did not return.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Waters came to see him the next afternoon at his hotel.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Are you pretty comfortable here?" he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, it's a change," said Colville. "I miss the little one
      awfully."
    </p>
    <p>
      "She's a winning child," admitted the old man. "That
      combination of conventionality and <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>
      is very captivating. I notice it in the mother."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, the mother has it too. Have you seen them to-day?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; Mrs. Bowen was sorry to be out when you came."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I had the misfortune to miss them. I had a great mind to go
      again to-night."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, it's a nice place," Mr. Waters admitted.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      The old gentleman smiled. "The difficulty is to know
      conscience from self-interest."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I dare say they would have been glad to keep you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you really think so?" asked Colville, with sudden
      seriousness. "I wish you would tell me why. Have you any
      reason&#8212;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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "That is broken off&#8212;if it were ever really on. It was a
      great mistake for both of us&#8212;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&#8212;my wickedness."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh no; I didn't think that," consented the old man.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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>I</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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 he
      otherwise."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And the evil that's suffered from the wrong we didn't
      intend?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Ah, perhaps that isn't evil."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It's pain!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It's pain, yes."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus put upon his honour, Colville was a long time
      thoughtful. "How can I tell?" he asked. "You know the facts;
      you can judge."
    </p>
    <p>
      "If I were to judge at all, I should say you were likely to
      do a greater wrong than any you have committed."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I don't understand you."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Miss Graham is a young girl, and I have no doubt that the
      young clergyman&#8212;what was his name?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Morton. Do you think&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I would give the world if it were so!" he cried fervently.
    </p>
    <p>
      "But you are really very much more concerned in something
      else."
    </p>
    <p>
      "In what else?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Can't you imagine?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," said Colville; but he felt himself growing very red in
      the face.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then I have no more to say."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, speak!" And after an interval Colville added, "Is it
      anything about&#8212;you hinted at something long
      ago&#8212;Mrs. Bowen?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes;" the old man nodded his head. "Do you owe her nothing?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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 <i>me</i>!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "It was certainly not to your credit that you were willing at
      the same time to marry some one else."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Willing! I wasn't willing! I was bound hand and foot!
      Yes&#8212;I don't care what you think of my weakness&#8212;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&#8212;to prevent that poor child, if possible,
      from ever finding out her mistake."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XXIII"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XXIII
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was shown into the salotto alone, but Effie Bowen came
      running in to meet him. She stopped suddenly, bridling.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "She is in the dining-room," replied the child, getting hold
      of his hand. "She wants you to come and have coffee with us."
    </p>
    <p>
      "By all means&#8212;not that I haven't had coffee already,
      though."
    </p>
    <p>
      She led the way, looking up at him shyly over her shoulder as
      they went.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You look very well," she smiled.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Effie will feel very much flattered," said Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Don't refuse a portion of the satisfaction," he cried.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, is it for me too?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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 bretrothed of that excellent, that wholly
      unobjectionable young man, Mr. Morton.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Will you have a little of the ice before your coffee?" asked
      Mrs. Bowen, proposing one of the moulded creams with her
      spoon.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, thank you. Perhaps I will take it in place of the
      coffee. They forgot to offer us any ice at the <i>table
      d'h&ocirc;te</i> this evening."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I <i>thought</i> you would come," whispered the child to
      Colville.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her mother made a little face of mock surprise at her. "Don't
      give yourself away, Effie."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Effie understood Colville's way of talking well enough to
      enjoy this; her mother did not laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Walked?" she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Certainly. Why not?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "You are getting well again. You'll soon be gone too."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I've <i>got</i> well. But as to being gone, there's no
      hurry. I rather think I shall wait now to see how long you
      stay."
    </p>
    <p>
      "We may keep you all summer," said Mrs. Bowen, dropping her
      eyelids indifferently.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes, go," said Mrs. Bowen; "but don't stay too long."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I will be back in time," said the child, and Colville
      remembered that he had proposed going to Giacosa's.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; don't forget." He had forgotten it himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh yes," said Colville dreamily.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were alone now, and each little silence seemed freighted
      with a meaning deeper than speech.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Have you seen Mr. Waters to-day?" asked Mrs. Bowen, after
      one of these lapses.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; he came this afternoon."
    </p>
    <p>
      "He is a very strange old man. I should think he would be
      lonely here."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "But he will want to go back there before he dies."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, I don't," murmured Mrs. Bowen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "About you. And he encouraged me to
      believe&#8212;imagine&#8212;that I might speak to
      you&#8212;ask&#8212;tell you that&#8212;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&#8212;do you love me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He followed her a pace or two. "And you will&#8212;will be my
      wife?" he pursued eagerly.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Lina, I have loved you from the first moment that I saw you
      this winter, and Heaven knows how long before!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes; I know that."
    </p>
    <p>
      "And every moment."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I know that too."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I expected that&#8212;I intended it."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You intended it! and you do love me! And yet you
      won't&#8212;Ah, I don't understand!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "How could <i>you</i> understand? I love you&#8212;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"&#8212;her calling him so showed how often she had
      thought of him so&#8212;"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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>I</i> dragged <i>you</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, I knew that well enough! And do you think that was
      flattering to me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;I give it up!" he cried desperately. But in the
      next breath he implored, "<i>Why</i> do you drive me from
      you, Lina?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "I?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "It appears to me you did warn her," said Colville, with some
      resentful return of courage.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "But why," he gathered courage to ask, "do you still dwell
      upon that? Mr. Waters told me that Mr. Morton&#8212;that
      there was&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "He is mistaken. He offered himself, and she refused him. He
      told me."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you think she would do otherwise, with you lying here
      between life and death? No: you can have no hope from that."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>ignis fatuus</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I couldn't imagine," he said, "that you cared anything for
      me when you warned another against me. If I could&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>tried</i> to make you care for
      me&#8212;falsely, cruelly, treacherously."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You didn't have to try very hard," said Colville, with a
      sort of cold resignation to his fate.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Do you dare to reproach me, Theodore Colville? But perhaps
      I've deserved this too."
    </p>
    <p>
      "No, Lina, you certainly don't deserve it, if it's
      unkindness, from me. go?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I want to assure you, Lina&#8212;Lina, my love, my dearest,
      as I shall call you for the first and last time!&#8212;that I
      <i>do</i> 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&#8212;you must forgive me!&#8212;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&#8212;it sounds more like nonsense, I am
      afraid&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Good-bye," she whispered. "Go&#8212;"
    </p>
    <p>
      "I am going."
    </p>
    <p>
      Effie Bowen ran into the room from the kitchen.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Aren't you going to take&#8212;" She stopped and turned to
      her mother. She must not remind Mr. Colville of his
      invitation; that was what her gesture expressed.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I can't go with you to-night, Effie," he said, stooping
      toward her for the inquiring kiss that she gave him. "I
      am&#8212;going away, and I must say good-bye."
    </p>
    <p>
      The solemnity of his voice alarmed her. "Going away!" she
      repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Yes&#8212;away from Florence. I'm afraid I shall not see you
      again."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>bear</i> it!" she sobbed out;
      and the reticence of her lamentation told more than a storm
      of cries and prayers.
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville wavered.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, you must stay!" said Lina, in the self-contemptuous
      voice of a woman who falls below her ideal of herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="XXIV"><!--Marker--></a> 
    <h2>
      XXIV
    </h2><br>
    <br>
     
    <p>
      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 <i>coup de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>villeggiatura</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh, Heaven grant it!" said Colville, with sudden piety.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Why?" demanded his wife.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Well, I wish she was married."
    </p>
    <p>
      "You have nothing whatever to do with her."
    </p>
    <p>
      It took him some time to realise that this was the fact.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No," he confessed; "but what do you think about it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      "There is no telling. We are such simpletons! If a man will
      keep on long enough&#8212;But if it isn't Mr. Morton, it will
      be some one else&#8212;some <i>young</i> person."
    </p>
    <p>
      Colville rose and went round the breakfast table to her. "I
      hope so," he said. "<i>I</i> have married a young person, and
      it would only be fair."
    </p>
    <p>
      This magnanimity was irresistible.
    </p>
    <p>
      THE END.
    
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>

<PRE>
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, INDIAN SUMMER ***

This file should be named 8insm10h.htm or 8insm10h.zip
Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8insm11h.htm
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8insm10ah.htm


Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our Web sites at:
<a href="http://gutenberg.net">http://gutenberg.net</a> or
<a href="http://promo.net.pg">http://promo.net/pg</a>

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).


Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

<a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04">http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04</a> or
<a href="ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04">ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04</a>

Or /etext03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.


Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

eBooks Year Month

    1  1971 July
   10  1991 January
  100  1994 January
 1000  1997 August
 1500  1998 October
 2000  1999 December
 2500  2000 December
 3000  2001 November
 4000  2001 October/November
 6000  2002 December*
 9000  2003 November*
10000  2004 January*


The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

We need your donations more than ever!

As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
that have responded.

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
just ask.

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
donate.

International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
ways.

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109

Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
method other than by check or money order.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.

We need your donations more than ever!

You can get up to date donation information online at:

<a href="http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html">http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html</a>


***

If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:

<a href="mailto:hart@pobox.com">Michael S. Hart [hart@pobox.com]</a>

Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.

We would prefer to send you information by email.


**The Legal Small Print**


(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.

To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.

THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:

[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
     including any form resulting from conversion by word
     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
     *EITHER*:

     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
          does *not* contain characters other than those
          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
          author, and additional characters may be used to
          indicate hypertext links; OR

     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
          OR

     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
          or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
     "Small Print!" statement.

[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
     let us know your plans and to work out the details.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.

The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com

[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
they hardware or software or any other related product without
express permission.]

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
</PRE>

</BODY>
</HTML>
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.25.1) at 2026-04-17 12:18:47 +0000