Peter, we may suppose, returned to Villa Floriano that

afternoon in a state of some excitement.

"He ought to have told her--"

"It was her right to be told--"

"What could her rank matter--"

"A gentleman can offer his hand to any woman--"

"She would have despised the conventional barriers--"

"No woman could be proof against such a compliment--"

The case was peculiar--ordinary rules could not apply to it--"

"Every man gets the wife he deserves--and he had certainly gone

a long way towards deserving her--"

"He should simply have told her the story of his book and of

her part in it--he need n't have mentioned love--she would have

understood--"

The Duchessa's voice, clear and cool and crisp-cut, sounded

perpetually in his ears; the words she had spoken, the

arguments she had urged, repeated and repeated themselves,

danced round and round, in his memory.

"Ought I to have told her--then and there? Shall I go to her

and tell her to-morrow?"

He tried to think; but he could not think. His faculties were

in a whirl--he could by no means command them. He could only

wait, inert, while the dance went on. It was an extremely

riotous dance. The Duchessa's conversation was reproduced

without sequence, without coherence--scattered fragments of it

were flashed before him fitfully, in swift disorder. If he

would attempt to seize upon one of those fragments, to detain

and fix it, for consideration--a speech of hers, a look, an

inflection--then the whole experience suddenly lost its

outlines, his recollection of it became a jumble, and he was

left, as it were, intellectually gasping.

He walked about his garden, he went into the house, he came

out, he walked about again. he went in and dressed for dinner,

he

sat on his rustic bench, he smoked cigarette after cigarette.

"Ought I to have told her? Ought I to tell her to-morrow?"

At moments there would come a lull in the turmoil, an interval

of quiet, of apparent clearness; and the answer would seem

perfectly plain.

"Of course, you ought to tell her. Tell her--and all will be

well. She has put herself in the supposititious woman's place,

and she says, 'He ought to tell her.' She says it earnestly,

vehemently. That means that if she were the woman, she would

wish to be told. She will despise the conventional barriers

--she will be touched, she will be moved. 'No woman could be

proof against such a compliment.' Go to her to-morrow, and

tell her--and all will be well."




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