"The Signorina Emelia Manfredi was with him," answered

Marietta, little recking how mere words can stab.

"Oh," said Peter.

"The Lord Prince Cardinal Udeschini was very sorry not to see

the Signorino," continued Marietta.

"Poor man--was he? Let us trust that time will console him,"

said Peter, callously.

But, "I wonder," he asked himself, "I wonder whether perhaps I

was the least bit hasty yesterday? If I had stopped, I should

have saved the Cardinal a journey here to-day--I might have

known that he would come, these Italians are so punctilious

--and then, if I had stopped--if I had stopped--possibly

--possibly--"

Possibly what? Oh, nothing. And yet, if he had stopped . . .

well, at any rate, he would have gained time. The Duchessa had

already begun to thaw. If he had stopped . . . He could

formulate no precise conclusion to that if; but he felt dimly

remorseful that he had not stopped, he felt that he had indeed

been the least bit hasty. And his remorse was somehow medicine

to his reviving hope.

"After all, I scarcely gave things a fair trial yesterday," he

said.

And the corollary of that, of course, was that he might give

things a further and fairer trial some other day.

But his hope was still hard hurt; he was still in a profound

dejection.

"The Signorino is not eating his dinner," cried Marietta,

fixing him with suspicious, upbraiding eyes.

"I never said I was," he retorted.

"The Signorino is not well?" she questioned, anxious.

"Oh, yes--cosi, cosi; the Signorino is well enough," he

answered.

"The dinner"--you could perceive that she brought herself with

difficulty to frame the dread hypothesis--"the dinner is not

good?" Her voice sank. She waited, tense, for his reply.

"The dinner," said he, "if one may criticise without eating it,

the dinner is excellent. I will have no aspersions cast upon

my cook."

"Ah-h-h!" breathed Marietta, a tremulous sigh of relief.

"It is not the Signorino, it is not the dinner, it is the world

that is awry," Peter went on, in reflective melancholy. "'T is

the times that are out of joint. 'T is the sex, the Sex, that

is not well, that is not good, that needs a thorough

overhauling and reforming."

"Which sex?" asked Marietta.

"The sex," said Peter. "By the unanimous consent of

rhetoricians, there is but one sex the sex, the fair sex, the

unfair sex, the gentle sex, the barbaric sex. We men do not

form a sex, we do not even form a sect. We are your mere

hangers-on, camp-followers, satellites--your things, your

playthings--we are the mere shuttlecocks which you toss hither

and thither with your battledores, as the wanton mood impels

you. We are born of woman, we are swaddled and nursed by

woman, we are governessed by woman; subsequently, we are

beguiled by woman, fooled by woman, led on, put off, tantalised

by woman, fretted and bullied by her; finally, last scene of

all, we are wrapped in our cerements by woman. Man's life,

birth, death, turn upon woman, as upon a hinge. I have ever

been a misanthrope, but now I am seriously thinking of becoming

a misogynist as well. Would you advise me to-do so?"




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