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+Project Gutenberg's Etext Where Angels Fear to Tread, by Forster
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+Title:  Where Angels Fear to Tread
+
+Author:  E. M. Forster
+
+Release Date:  December, 2001  [Etext #2948]
+[Date last updated: April 10, 2005]
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext Where Angels Fear to Tread, by Forster
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+
+Where Angels Fear to Tread
+
+by E. M. Forster
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+They were all at Charing Cross to see Lilia off--Philip,
+Harriet, Irma, Mrs. Herriton herself.  Even Mrs. Theobald,
+squired by Mr. Kingcroft, had braved the journey from
+Yorkshire to bid her only daughter good-bye.  Miss Abbott
+was likewise attended by numerous relatives, and the sight
+of so many people talking at once and saying such different
+things caused Lilia to break into ungovernable peals of laughter.
+
+"Quite an ovation," she cried, sprawling out of her
+first-class carriage.  "They'll take us for royalty.  Oh,
+Mr. Kingcroft, get us foot-warmers."
+
+The good-natured young man hurried away, and Philip,
+taking his place, flooded her with a final stream of advice
+and injunctions--where to stop, how to learn Italian, when to
+use mosquito-nets, what pictures to look at.  "Remember," he
+concluded, "that it is only by going off the track that you
+get to know the country.  See the little towns--Gubbio,
+Pienza, Cortona, San Gemignano, Monteriano.  And don't, let
+me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy's
+only a museum of antiquities and art.  Love and understand
+the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land."
+
+"How I wish you were coming, Philip," she said,
+flattered at the unwonted notice her brother-in-law was
+giving her.
+
+"I wish I were."  He could have managed it without great
+difficulty, for his career at the Bar was not so intense as
+to prevent occasional holidays.  But his family disliked his
+continual visits to the Continent, and he himself often
+found pleasure in the idea that he was too busy to leave town.
+
+"Good-bye, dear every one.  What a whirl!"  She caught
+sight of her little daughter Irma, and felt that a touch of
+maternal solemnity was required.  "Good-bye, darling.  Mind
+you're always good, and do what Granny tells you."
+
+She referred not to her own mother, but to her
+mother-in-law, Mrs. Herriton, who hated the title of Granny.
+
+Irma lifted a serious face to be kissed, and said
+cautiously, "I'll do my best."
+
+"She is sure to be good," said Mrs. Herriton, who was
+standing pensively a little out of the hubbub.  But Lilia
+was already calling to Miss Abbott, a tall, grave, rather
+nice-looking young lady who was conducting her adieus in a
+more decorous manner on the platform.
+
+"Caroline, my Caroline!  Jump in, or your chaperon will
+go off without you."
+
+And Philip, whom the idea of Italy always intoxicated,
+had started again, telling her of the supreme moments of her
+coming journey--the Campanile of Airolo, which would burst on
+her when she emerged from the St. Gothard tunnel, presaging
+the future; the view of the Ticino and Lago Maggiore as the
+train climbed the slopes of Monte Cenere; the view of
+Lugano, the view of Como--Italy gathering thick around her
+now--the arrival at her first resting-place, when, after long
+driving through dark and dirty streets, she should at last
+behold, amid the roar of trams and the glare of arc lamps,
+the buttresses of the cathedral of Milan.
+
+"Handkerchiefs and collars," screamed Harriet, "in my
+inlaid box!  I've lent you my inlaid box."
+
+"Good old Harry!"  She kissed every one again, and there
+was a moment's silence.  They all smiled steadily, excepting
+Philip, who was choking in the fog, and old Mrs. Theobald,
+who had begun to cry.  Miss Abbott got into the carriage. 
+The guard himself shut the door, and told Lilia that she
+would be all right.  Then the train moved, and they all
+moved with it a couple of steps, and waved their
+handkerchiefs, and uttered cheerful little cries.  At that
+moment Mr. Kingcroft reappeared, carrying a footwarmer by
+both ends, as if it was a tea-tray.  He was sorry that he
+was too late, and called out in a quivering voice,
+"Good-bye, Mrs. Charles.  May you enjoy yourself, and may
+God bless you."
+
+Lilia smiled and nodded, and then the absurd position of
+the foot-warmer overcame her, and she began to laugh again.
+
+"Oh, I am so sorry," she cried back, "but you do look so
+funny.  Oh, you all look so funny waving!  Oh, pray!"  And
+laughing helplessly, she was carried out into the fog.
+
+"High spirits to begin so long a journey," said Mrs.
+Theobald, dabbing her eyes.
+
+Mr. Kingcroft solemnly moved his head in token of
+agreement.  "I wish," said he, "that Mrs. Charles had gotten
+the footwarmer.  These London porters won't take heed to a
+country chap."
+
+"But you did your best," said Mrs. Herriton.  "And I
+think it simply noble of you to have brought Mrs. Theobald
+all the way here on such a day as this."  Then, rather
+hastily, she shook hands, and left him to take Mrs. Theobald
+all the way back.
+
+Sawston, her own home, was within easy reach of London,
+and they were not late for tea.  Tea was in the dining-room,
+with an egg for Irma, to keep up the child's spirits.  The
+house seemed strangely quiet after a fortnight's bustle, and
+their conversation was spasmodic and subdued.  They wondered
+whether the travellers had got to Folkestone, whether it
+would be at all rough, and if so what would happen to poor
+Miss Abbott.
+
+"And, Granny, when will the old ship get to Italy?"
+asked Irma.
+
+"'Grandmother,' dear; not 'Granny,'" said Mrs. Herriton,
+giving her a kiss.  "And we say 'a boat' or 'a steamer,' not
+'a ship.' Ships have sails.  And mother won't go all the way
+by sea.  You look at the map of Europe, and you'll see why. 
+Harriet, take her.  Go with Aunt Harriet, and she'll show
+you the map."
+
+"Righto!" said the little girl, and dragged the
+reluctant Harriet into the library.  Mrs. Herriton and her
+son were left alone.  There was immediately confidence
+between them.
+
+"Here beginneth the New Life," said Philip.
+
+"Poor child, how vulgar!" murmured Mrs. Herriton.  "It's
+surprising that she isn't worse.  But she has got a look of
+poor Charles about her."
+
+"And--alas, alas!--a look of old Mrs. Theobald.  What
+appalling apparition was that!  I did think the lady was
+bedridden as well as imbecile.  Why ever did she come?"
+
+"Mr. Kingcroft made her.  I am certain of it.  He wanted
+to see Lilia again, and this was the only way."
+
+"I hope he is satisfied.  I did not think my
+sister-in-law distinguished herself in her farewells."
+
+Mrs. Herriton shuddered.  "I mind nothing, so long as
+she has gone--and gone with Miss Abbott.  It is mortifying to
+think that a widow of thirty-three requires a girl ten years
+younger to look after her."
+
+"I pity Miss Abbott.  Fortunately one admirer is chained
+to England.  Mr. Kingcroft cannot leave the crops or the
+climate or something.  I don't think, either, he improved
+his chances today.  He, as well as Lilia, has the knack of
+being absurd in public."
+
+Mrs. Herriton replied, "When a man is neither well bred,
+nor well connected, nor handsome, nor clever, nor rich, even
+Lilia may discard him in time."
+
+"No.  I believe she would take any one.  Right up to the
+last, when her boxes were packed, she was 'playing' the
+chinless curate.  Both the curates are chinless, but hers
+had the dampest hands.  I came on them in the Park.  They
+were speaking of the Pentateuch."
+
+"My dear boy!  If possible, she has got worse and
+worse.  It was your idea of Italian travel that saved us!"
+
+Philip brightened at the little compliment.  "The odd
+part is that she was quite eager--always asking me for
+information; and of course I was very glad to give it.  I
+admit she is a Philistine, appallingly ignorant, and her
+taste in art is false.  Still, to have any taste at all is
+something.  And I do believe that Italy really purifies and
+ennobles all who visit her.  She is the school as well as
+the playground of the world.  It is really to Lilia's credit
+that she wants to go there."
+
+"She would go anywhere," said his mother, who had heard
+enough of the praises of Italy.  "I and Caroline Abbott had
+the greatest difficulty in dissuading her from the Riviera."
+
+"No, Mother; no.  She was really keen on Italy.  This
+travel is quite a crisis for her."  He found the situation
+full of whimsical romance: there was something half
+attractive, half repellent in the thought of this vulgar
+woman journeying to places he loved and revered.  Why should
+she not be transfigured?  The same had happened to the Goths.
+
+Mrs. Herriton did not believe in romance nor in
+transfiguration, nor in parallels from history, nor in
+anything else that may disturb domestic life.  She adroitly
+changed the subject before Philip got excited.  Soon Harriet
+returned, having given her lesson in geography.  Irma went
+to bed early, and was tucked up by her grandmother.  Then
+the two ladies worked and played cards.  Philip read a
+book.  And so they all settled down to their quiet,
+profitable existence, and continued it without interruption
+through the winter.
+
+It was now nearly ten years since Charles had fallen in
+love with Lilia Theobald because she was pretty, and during
+that time Mrs. Herriton had hardly known a moment's rest. 
+For six months she schemed to prevent the match, and when it
+had taken place she turned to another task--the supervision
+of her daughter-in-law.  Lilia must be pushed through life
+without bringing discredit on the family into which she had
+married.  She was aided by Charles, by her daughter Harriet,
+and, as soon as he was old enough, by the clever one of the
+family, Philip.  The birth of Irma made things still more
+difficult.  But fortunately old Mrs. Theobald, who had
+attempted interference, began to break up.  It was an effort
+to her to leave Whitby, and Mrs. Herriton discouraged the
+effort as far as possible.  That curious duel which is
+fought over every baby was fought and decided early. Irma
+belonged to her father's family, not to her mother's.
+
+Charles died, and the struggle recommenced.  Lilia tried
+to assert herself, and said that she should go to take care
+of Mrs. Theobald.  It required all Mrs. Herriton's kindness
+to prevent her.  A house was finally taken for her at
+Sawston, and there for three years she lived with Irma,
+continually subject to the refining influences of her late
+husband's family.
+
+During one of her rare Yorkshire visits trouble began
+again.  Lilia confided to a friend that she liked a Mr.
+Kingcroft extremely, but that she was not exactly engaged to
+him.  The news came round to Mrs. Herriton, who at once
+wrote, begging for information, and pointing out that Lilia
+must either be engaged or not, since no intermediate state
+existed.  It was a good letter, and flurried Lilia
+extremely.  She left Mr. Kingcroft without even the pressure
+of a rescue-party.  She cried a great deal on her return to
+Sawston, and said she was very sorry.  Mrs. Herriton took
+the opportunity of speaking more seriously about the duties
+of widowhood and motherhood than she had ever done before. 
+But somehow things never went easily after.  Lilia would not
+settle down in her place among Sawston matrons.  She was a
+bad housekeeper, always in the throes of some domestic
+crisis, which Mrs. Herriton, who kept her servants for
+years, had to step across and adjust.  She let Irma stop
+away from school for insufficient reasons, and she allowed
+her to wear rings.  She learnt to bicycle, for the purpose
+of waking the place up, and coasted down the High Street one
+Sunday evening, falling off at the turn by the church.  If
+she had not been a relative, it would have been
+entertaining.  But even Philip, who in theory loved
+outraging English conventions, rose to the occasion, and
+gave her a talking which she remembered to her dying day. 
+It was just then, too, that they discovered that she still
+allowed Mr. Kingcroft to write to her "as a gentleman
+friend," and to send presents to Irma.
+
+Philip thought of Italy, and the situation was saved. 
+Caroline, charming, sober, Caroline Abbott, who lived two
+turnings away, was seeking a companion for a year's travel. 
+Lilia gave up her house, sold half her furniture, left the
+other half and Irma with Mrs. Herriton, and had now
+departed, amid universal approval, for a change of scene.
+
+She wrote to them frequently during the winter--more
+frequently than she wrote to her mother.  Her letters were
+always prosperous.  Florence she found perfectly sweet,
+Naples a dream, but very whiffy.  In Rome one had simply to
+sit still and feel.  Philip, however, declared that she was
+improving.  He was particularly gratified when in the early
+spring she began to visit the smaller towns that he had
+recommended.  "In a place like this," she wrote, "one really
+does feel in the heart of things, and off the beaten track. 
+Looking out of a Gothic window every morning, it seems
+impossible that the middle ages have passed away."  The
+letter was from Monteriano, and concluded with a not
+unsuccessful description of the wonderful little town.
+
+"It is something that she is contented," said Mrs.
+Herriton.  "But no one could live three months with Caroline
+Abbott and not be the better for it."
+
+Just then Irma came in from school, and she read her
+mother's letter to her, carefully correcting any grammatical
+errors, for she was a loyal supporter of parental
+authority--Irma listened politely, but soon changed the
+subject to hockey, in which her whole being was absorbed. 
+They were to vote for colours that afternoon--yellow and
+white or yellow and green.  What did her grandmother think?
+
+Of course Mrs. Herriton had an opinion, which she
+sedately expounded, in spite of Harriet, who said that
+colours were unnecessary for children, and of Philip, who
+said that they were ugly.  She was getting proud of Irma,
+who had certainly greatly improved, and could no longer be
+called that most appalling of things--a vulgar child.  She
+was anxious to form her before her mother returned.  So she
+had no objection to the leisurely movements of the
+travellers, and even suggested that they should overstay
+their year if it suited them.
+
+Lilia's next letter was also from Monteriano, and Philip
+grew quite enthusiastic.
+
+"They've stopped there over a week!" he cried.  "Why!  I
+shouldn't have done as much myself.  They must be really
+keen, for the hotel's none too comfortable."
+
+"I cannot understand people," said Harriet.  "What can
+they be doing all day?  And there is no church there, I suppose."
+
+"There is Santa Deodata, one of the most beautiful
+churches in Italy."
+
+"Of course I mean an English church," said Harriet
+stiffly.  "Lilia promised me that she would always be in a
+large town on Sundays."
+
+"If she goes to a service at Santa Deodata's, she will
+find more beauty and sincerity than there is in all the Back
+Kitchens of Europe."
+
+The Back Kitchen was his nickname for St. James's, a
+small depressing edifice much patronized by his sister.  She
+always resented any slight on it, and Mrs. Herriton had to
+intervene.
+
+"Now, dears, don't.  Listen to Lilia's letter.  'We love
+this place, and I do not know how I shall ever thank Philip
+for telling me it.  It is not only so quaint, but one sees
+the Italians unspoiled in all their simplicity and charm
+here.  The frescoes are wonderful.  Caroline, who grows
+sweeter every day, is very busy sketching.' "
+
+"Every one to his taste!" said Harriet, who always
+delivered a platitude as if it was an epigram.  She was
+curiously virulent about Italy, which she had never visited,
+her only experience of the Continent being an occasional six
+weeks in the Protestant parts of Switzerland.
+
+"Oh, Harriet is a bad lot!" said Philip as soon as she
+left the room.  His mother laughed, and told him not to be
+naughty; and the appearance of Irma, just off to school,
+prevented further discussion.  Not only in Tracts is a child
+a peacemaker.
+
+"One moment, Irma," said her uncle.  "I'm going to the
+station.  I'll give you the pleasure of my company."
+
+They started together.  Irma was gratified; but
+conversation flagged, for Philip had not the art of talking
+to the young.  Mrs. Herriton sat a little longer at the
+breakfast table, re-reading Lilia's letter.  Then she helped
+the cook to clear, ordered dinner, and started the housemaid
+turning out the drawing-room, Tuesday being its day.  The
+weather was lovely, and she thought she would do a little
+gardening, as it was quite early.  She called Harriet, who
+had recovered from the insult to St.  James's, and together
+they went to the kitchen garden and began to sow some early
+vegetables.
+
+"We will save the peas to the last; they are the
+greatest fun," said Mrs. Herriton, who had the gift of
+making work a treat.  She and her elderly daughter always
+got on very well, though they had not a great deal in
+common.  Harriet's education had been almost too
+successful.  As Philip once said, she had "bolted all the
+cardinal virtues and couldn't digest them."  Though pious
+and patriotic, and a great moral asset for the house, she
+lacked that pliancy and tact which her mother so much
+valued, and had expected her to pick up for herself. 
+Harriet, if she had been allowed, would have driven Lilia to
+an open rupture, and, what was worse, she would have done
+the same to Philip two years before, when he returned full
+of passion for Italy, and ridiculing Sawston and its ways.
+
+"It's a shame, Mother!" she had cried.  "Philip laughs
+at everything--the Book Club, the Debating Society, the
+Progressive Whist, the bazaars.  People won't like it.  We
+have our reputation.  A house divided against itself cannot stand."
+
+Mrs. Herriton replied in the memorable words, "Let
+Philip say what he likes, and he will let us do what we
+like."  And Harriet had acquiesced.
+
+They sowed the duller vegetables first, and a pleasant
+feeling of righteous fatigue stole over them as they
+addressed themselves to the peas.  Harriet stretched a
+string to guide the row straight, and Mrs. Herriton
+scratched a furrow with a pointed stick.  At the end of it
+she looked at her watch.
+
+"It's twelve!  The second post's in.  Run and see if
+there are any letters."
+
+Harriet did not want to go.  "Let's finish the peas. 
+There won't be any letters."
+
+"No, dear; please go.  I'll sow the peas, but you shall
+cover them up--and mind the birds don't see 'em!"
+
+Mrs. Herriton was very careful to let those peas trickle
+evenly from her hand, and at the end of the row she was
+conscious that she had never sown better.  They were
+expensive too.
+
+"Actually old Mrs. Theobald!" said Harriet, returning.
+
+"Read me the letter.  My hands are dirty.  How
+intolerable the crested paper is."
+
+Harriet opened the envelope.
+
+"I don't understand," she said; "it doesn't make sense."
+
+"Her letters never did."
+
+"But it must be sillier than usual," said Harriet, and
+her voice began to quaver.  "Look here, read it, Mother; I
+can't make head or tail."
+
+Mrs. Herriton took the letter indulgently.  "What is the
+difficulty?" she said after a long pause.  "What is it that
+puzzles you in this letter?"
+
+"The meaning--" faltered Harriet.  The sparrows hopped
+nearer and began to eye the peas.
+
+"The meaning is quite clear--Lilia is engaged to be
+married.  Don't cry, dear; please me by not crying--don't
+talk at all.  It's more than I could bear.  She is going to
+marry some one she has met in a hotel.  Take the letter and
+read for yourself."  Suddenly she broke down over what might
+seem a small point.  "How dare she not tell me direct!  How
+dare she write first to Yorkshire!  Pray, am I to hear
+through Mrs. Theobald--a patronizing, insolent letter like
+this?  Have I no claim at all?  Bear witness, dear"--she
+choked with passion--"bear witness that for this I'll never
+forgive her!"
+
+"Oh, what is to be done?" moaned Harriet.  "What is to
+be done?"
+
+"This first!"  She tore the letter into little pieces
+and scattered it over the mould.  "Next, a telegram for
+Lilia!  No!  a telegram for Miss Caroline Abbott.  She, too,
+has something to explain."
+
+"Oh, what is to be done?" repeated Harriet, as she
+followed her mother to the house.  She was helpless before
+such effrontery.  What awful thing--what awful person had
+come to Lilia?  "Some one in the hotel."  The letter only
+said that.  What kind of person?  A gentleman?  An
+Englishman?  The letter did not say.
+
+"Wire reason of stay at Monteriano.  Strange rumours,"
+read Mrs. Herriton, and addressed the telegram to Abbott,
+Stella d'Italia, Monteriano, Italy.  "If there is an office
+there," she added, "we might get an answer this evening. 
+Since Philip is back at seven, and the eight-fifteen catches
+the midnight boat at Dover--Harriet, when you go with this,
+get 100 pounds in 5 pound notes at the bank."
+
+"Go, dear, at once; do not talk.  I see Irma coming back;
+go quickly.... Well, Irma dear, and whose team are you in
+this afternoon--Miss Edith's or Miss May's?"
+
+But as soon as she had behaved as usual to her
+grand-daughter, she went to the library and took out the
+large atlas, for she wanted to know about Monteriano.  The
+name was in the smallest print, in the midst of a
+woolly-brown tangle of hills which were called the
+"Sub-Apennines."  It was not so very far from Siena, which
+she had learnt at school.  Past it there wandered a thin
+black line, notched at intervals like a saw, and she knew
+that this was a railway.  But the map left a good deal to
+imagination, and she had not got any.  She looked up the
+place in "Childe Harold," but Byron had not been there.  Nor
+did Mark Twain visit it in the "Tramp Abroad."  The
+resources of literature were exhausted: she must wait till
+Philip came home.  And the thought of Philip made her try
+Philip's room, and there she found "Central Italy," by
+Baedeker, and opened it for the first time in her life and
+read in it as follows:--
+
+
+MONTERIANO (pop. 4800).  Hotels: Stella d'Italia,
+moderate only; Globo, dirty. * Caffe Garibaldi.  Post and
+Telegraph office in Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, next to
+theatre.  Photographs at Seghena's (cheaper in
+Florence).  Diligence (1 lira) meets principal trains.
+
+Chief attractions (2-3 hours): Santa Deodata, Palazzo
+Pubblico, Sant' Agostino, Santa Caterina, Sant' Ambrogio,
+Palazzo Capocchi.  Guide (2 lire) unnecessary.  A walk
+round the Walls should on no account be omitted.  The
+view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset.
+
+History: Monteriano, the Mons Rianus of Antiquity,
+whose Ghibelline tendencies are noted by Dante (Purg.
+xx.), definitely emancipated itself from Poggibonsi in
+1261.  Hence the distich, "POGGIBONIZZI, FAUI IN LA, CHE
+MONTERIANO SI FA CITTA!"  till recently enscribed over
+the Siena gate.  It remained independent till 1530, when
+it was sacked by the Papal troops and became part of the
+Grand Duchy of Tuscany.  It is now of small importance,
+and seat of the district prison.  The inhabitants are
+still noted for their agreeable manners.
+
+                     - - - - -
+
+The traveller will proceed direct from the Siena gate to
+the Collegiate Church of Santa Deodata, and inspect (5th
+chapel on right) the charming * Frescoes....
+
+
+Mrs. Herriton did not proceed.  She was not one to
+detect the hidden charms of Baedeker.  Some of the
+information seemed to her unnecessary, all of it was dull. 
+Whereas Philip could never read "The view from the Rocca
+(small gratuity) is finest at sunset" without a catching at
+the heart.  Restoring the book to its place, she went
+downstairs, and looked up and down the asphalt paths for her
+daughter.  She saw her at last, two turnings away, vainly
+trying to shake off Mr. Abbott, Miss Caroline Abbott's
+father.  Harriet was always unfortunate.  At last she
+returned, hot, agitated, crackling with bank-notes, and Irma
+bounced to greet her, and trod heavily on her corn.
+
+"Your feet grow larger every day," said the agonized
+Harriet, and gave her niece a violent push.  Then Irma
+cried, and Mrs. Herriton was annoyed with Harriet for
+betraying irritation.  Lunch was nasty; and during pudding
+news arrived that the cook, by sheer dexterity, had broken a
+very vital knob off the kitchen-range.  "It is too bad,"
+said Mrs. Herriton.  Irma said it was three bad, and was
+told not to be rude.  After lunch Harriet would get out
+Baedeker, and read in injured tones about Monteriano, the
+Mons Rianus of Antiquity, till her mother stopped her.
+
+"It's ridiculous to read, dear.  She's not trying to
+marry any one in the place.  Some tourist, obviously, who's
+stopping in the hotel.  The place has nothing to do with it
+at all."
+
+"But what a place to go to!  What nice person, too, do
+you meet in a hotel?"
+
+"Nice or nasty, as I have told you several times before,
+is not the point.  Lilia has insulted our family, and she
+shall suffer for it.  And when you speak against hotels, I
+think you forget that I met your father at Chamounix.  You
+can contribute nothing, dear, at present, and I think you
+had better hold your tongue.  I am going to the kitchen, to
+speak about the range."
+
+She spoke just too much, and the cook said that if she
+could not give satisfaction--she had better leave.  A small
+thing at hand is greater than a great thing remote, and
+Lilia, misconducting herself upon a mountain in Central
+Italy, was immediately hidden.  Mrs. Herriton flew to a
+registry office, failed; flew to another, failed again; came
+home, was told by the housemaid that things seemed so
+unsettled that she had better leave as well; had tea, wrote
+six letters, was interrupted by cook and housemaid, both
+weeping, asking her pardon, and imploring to be taken back. 
+In the flush of victory the door-bell rang, and there was
+the telegram: "Lilia engaged to Italian nobility.  Writing. 
+Abbott."
+
+"No answer," said Mrs. Herriton.  "Get down Mr. Philip's
+Gladstone from the attic."
+
+She would not allow herself to be frightened by the
+unknown.  Indeed she knew a little now.  The man was not an
+Italian noble, otherwise the telegram would have said so. 
+It must have been written by Lilia.  None but she would have
+been guilty of the fatuous vulgarity of "Italian nobility." 
+She recalled phrases of this morning's letter: "We love this
+place--Caroline is sweeter than ever, and busy
+sketching--Italians full of simplicity and charm."  And the
+remark of Baedeker, "The inhabitants are still noted for
+their agreeable manners," had a baleful meaning now.  If
+Mrs. Herriton had no imagination, she had intuition, a more
+useful quality, and the picture she made to herself of
+Lilia's FIANCE did not prove altogether wrong.
+
+So Philip was received with the news that he must start
+in half an hour for Monteriano.  He was in a painful
+position.  For three years he had sung the praises of the
+Italians, but he had never contemplated having one as a
+relative.  He tried to soften the thing down to his mother,
+but in his heart of hearts he agreed with her when she said,
+"The man may be a duke or he may be an organ-grinder.  That
+is not the point.  If Lilia marries him she insults the
+memory of Charles, she insults Irma, she insults us. 
+Therefore I forbid her, and if she disobeys we have done
+with her for ever."
+
+"I will do all I can," said Philip in a low voice.  It
+was the first time he had had anything to do.  He kissed his
+mother and sister and puzzled Irma.  The hall was warm and
+attractive as he looked back into it from the cold March
+night, and he departed for Italy reluctantly, as for
+something commonplace and dull.
+
+Before Mrs. Herriton went to bed she wrote to Mrs.
+Theobald, using plain language about Lilia's conduct, and
+hinting that it was a question on which every one must
+definitely choose sides.  She added, as if it was an
+afterthought, that Mrs. Theobald's letter had arrived that
+morning.
+
+Just as she was going upstairs she remembered that she
+never covered up those peas.  It upset her more than
+anything, and again and again she struck the banisters with
+vexation.  Late as it was, she got a lantern from the
+tool-shed and went down the garden to rake the earth over
+them.  The sparrows had taken every one.  But countless
+fragments of the letter remained, disfiguring the tidy
+ground.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+When the bewildered tourist alights at the station of
+Monteriano, he finds himself in the middle of the country. 
+There are a few houses round the railway, and many more
+dotted over the plain and the slopes of the hills, but of a
+town, mediaeval or otherwise, not the slightest sign.  He
+must take what is suitably termed a "legno"--a piece of
+wood--and drive up eight miles of excellent road into the
+middle ages.  For it is impossible, as well as sacrilegious,
+to be as quick as Baedeker.
+
+It was three in the afternoon when Philip left the
+realms of commonsense.  He was so weary with travelling that
+he had fallen asleep in the train.  His fellow-passengers
+had the usual Italian gift of divination, and when
+Monteriano came they knew he wanted to go there, and dropped
+him out.  His feet sank into the hot asphalt of the
+platform, and in a dream he watched the train depart, while
+the porter who ought to have been carrying his bag, ran up
+the line playing touch-you-last with the guard.  Alas!  he
+was in no humour for Italy.  Bargaining for a legno bored
+him unutterably.  The man asked six lire; and though Philip
+knew that for eight miles it should scarcely be more than
+four, yet he was about to give what he was asked, and so
+make the man discontented and unhappy for the rest of the
+day.  He was saved from this social blunder by loud shouts,
+and looking up the road saw one cracking his whip and waving
+his reins and driving two horses furiously, and behind him
+there appeared the swaying figure of a woman, holding
+star-fish fashion on to anything she could touch.  It was
+Miss Abbott, who had just received his letter from Milan
+announcing the time of his arrival, and had hurried down to
+meet him.
+
+He had known Miss Abbott for years, and had never had
+much opinion about her one way or the other.  She was good,
+quiet, dull, and amiable, and young only because she was
+twenty-three: there was nothing in her appearance or manner
+to suggest the fire of youth.  All her life had been spent
+at Sawston with a dull and amiable father, and her pleasant,
+pallid face, bent on some respectable charity, was a
+familiar object of the Sawston streets.  Why she had ever
+wished to leave them was surprising; but as she truly said,
+"I am John Bull to the backbone, yet I do want to see Italy,
+just once.  Everybody says it is marvellous, and that one
+gets no idea of it from books at all."  The curate suggested
+that a year was a long time; and Miss Abbott, with decorous
+playfulness, answered him, "Oh, but you must let me have my
+fling!  I promise to have it once, and once only.  It will
+give me things to think about and talk about for the rest of
+my life."  The curate had consented; so had Mr. Abbott.  And
+here she was in a legno, solitary, dusty, frightened, with
+as much to answer and to answer for as the most dashing
+adventuress could desire.
+
+They shook hands without speaking.  She made room for
+Philip and his luggage amidst the loud indignation of the
+unsuccessful driver, whom it required the combined eloquence
+of the station-master and the station beggar to confute. 
+The silence was prolonged until they started.  For three
+days he had been considering what he should do, and still
+more what he should say.  He had invented a dozen imaginary
+conversations, in all of which his logic and eloquence
+procured him certain victory.  But how to begin?  He was in
+the enemy's country, and everything--the hot sun, the cold
+air behind the heat, the endless rows of olive-trees,
+regular yet mysterious--seemed hostile to the placid
+atmosphere of Sawston in which his thoughts took birth.  At
+the outset he made one great concession.  If the match was
+really suitable, and Lilia were bent on it, he would give
+in, and trust to his influence with his mother to set things
+right.  He would not have made the concession in England;
+but here in Italy, Lilia, however wilful and silly, was at
+all events growing to be a human being.
+
+"Are we to talk it over now?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly, please," said Miss Abbott, in great
+agitation.  "If you will be so very kind."
+
+"Then how long has she been engaged?"
+
+Her face was that of a perfect fool--a fool in terror.
+
+"A short time--quite a short time," she stammered, as if
+the shortness of the time would reassure him.
+
+"I should like to know how long, if you can remember."
+
+She entered into elaborate calculations on her fingers. 
+"Exactly eleven days," she said at last.
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+More calculations, while he tapped irritably with his
+foot.  "Close on three weeks."
+
+"Did you know him before you came?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh!  Who is he?"
+
+"A native of the place."
+
+The second silence took place.  They had left the plain
+now and were climbing up the outposts of the hills, the
+olive-trees still accompanying.  The driver, a jolly fat
+man, had got out to ease the horses, and was walking by the
+side of the carriage.
+
+"I understood they met at the hotel."
+
+"It was a mistake of Mrs. Theobald's."
+
+"I also understand that he is a member of the Italian nobility."
+
+She did not reply.
+
+"May I be told his name?"
+
+Miss Abbott whispered, "Carella."  But the driver heard
+her, and a grin split over his face.  The engagement must be
+known already.
+
+"Carella?  Conte or Marchese, or what?"
+
+"Signor," said Miss Abbott, and looked helplessly aside.
+
+"Perhaps I bore you with these questions.  If so, I will
+stop."
+
+"Oh, no, please; not at all.  I am here--my own idea--to
+give all information which you very naturally--and to see if
+somehow--please ask anything you like."
+
+"Then how old is he?"
+
+"Oh, quite young.  Twenty-one, I believe."
+
+There burst from Philip the exclamation, "Good Lord!"
+
+"One would never believe it," said Miss Abbott,
+flushing.  "He looks much older."
+
+"And is he good-looking?" he asked, with gathering sarcasm.
+
+She became decisive.  "Very good-looking.  All his
+features are good, and he is well built--though I dare say
+English standards would find him too short."
+
+Philip, whose one physical advantage was his height,
+felt annoyed at her implied indifference to it.
+
+"May I conclude that you like him?"
+
+She replied decisively again, "As far as I have seen
+him, I do."
+
+At that moment the carriage entered a little wood, which
+lay brown and sombre across the cultivated hill.  The trees
+of the wood were small and leafless, but noticeable for
+this--that their stems stood in violets as rocks stand in the
+summer sea.  There are such violets in England, but not so
+many.  Nor are there so many in Art, for no painter has the
+courage.  The cart-ruts were channels, the hollow lagoons;
+even the dry white margin of the road was splashed, like a
+causeway soon to be submerged under the advancing tide of
+spring.  Philip paid no attention at the time: he was
+thinking what to say next.  But his eyes had registered the
+beauty, and next March he did not forget that the road to
+Monteriano must traverse innumerable flowers.
+
+"As far as I have seen him, I do like him," repeated
+Miss Abbott, after a pause.
+
+He thought she sounded a little defiant, and crushed her
+at once.
+
+"What is he, please?  You haven't told me that.  What's
+his position?"
+
+She opened her mouth to speak, and no sound came from
+it.  Philip waited patiently.  She tried to be audacious,
+and failed pitiably.
+
+"No position at all.  He is kicking his heels, as my
+father would say.  You see, he has only just finished his
+military service."
+
+"As a private?"
+
+"I suppose so.  There is general conscription.  He was
+in the Bersaglieri, I think.  Isn't that the crack regiment?"
+
+"The men in it must be short and broad.  They must also
+be able to walk six miles an hour."
+
+She looked at him wildly, not understanding all that he
+said, but feeling that he was very clever.  Then she
+continued her defence of Signor Carella.
+
+"And now, like most young men, he is looking out for
+something to do."
+
+"Meanwhile?"
+
+"Meanwhile, like most young men, he lives with his
+people--father, mother, two sisters, and a tiny tot of a brother."
+
+There was a grating sprightliness about her that drove
+him nearly mad.  He determined to silence her at last.
+
+"One more question, and only one more.  What is his father?"
+
+"His father," said Miss Abbott.  "Well, I don't suppose
+you'll think it a good match.  But that's not the point.  I
+mean the point is not--I mean that social differences--love,
+after all--not but what--I--"
+
+Philip ground his teeth together and said nothing.
+
+"Gentlemen sometimes judge hardly.  But I feel that you,
+and at all events your mother--so really good in every sense,
+so really unworldly--after all, love-marriages are made in heaven."
+
+"Yes, Miss Abbott, I know.  But I am anxious to hear
+heaven's choice.  You arouse my curiosity.  Is my
+sister-in-law to marry an angel?"
+
+"Mr. Herriton, don't--please, Mr. Herriton--a dentist. 
+His father's a dentist."
+
+Philip gave a cry of personal disgust and pain.  He
+shuddered all over, and edged away from his companion.  A
+dentist!  A dentist at Monteriano.  A dentist in fairyland! 
+False teeth and laughing gas and the tilting chair at a
+place which knew the Etruscan League, and the Pax Romana,
+and Alaric himself, and the Countess Matilda, and the Middle
+Ages, all fighting and holiness, and the Renaissance, all
+fighting and beauty!  He thought of Lilia no longer.  He was
+anxious for himself: he feared that Romance might die.
+
+Romance only dies with life.  No pair of pincers will
+ever pull it out of us.  But there is a spurious sentiment
+which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and
+the grotesque.  A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it
+goes from us the better.  It was going from Philip now, and
+therefore he gave the cry of pain.
+
+"I cannot think what is in the air," he began.  "If
+Lilia was determined to disgrace us, she might have found a
+less repulsive way.  A boy of medium height with a pretty
+face, the son of a dentist at Monteriano.  Have I put it
+correctly?  May I surmise that he has not got one penny? 
+May I also surmise that his social position is nil?
+Furthermore--"
+
+"Stop!  I'll tell you no more."
+
+"Really, Miss Abbott, it is a little late for
+reticence.  You have equipped me admirably!"
+
+"I'll tell you not another word!" she cried, with a
+spasm of terror.  Then she got out her handkerchief, and
+seemed as if she would shed tears.  After a silence, which
+he intended to symbolize to her the dropping of a curtain on
+the scene, he began to talk of other subjects.
+
+They were among olives again, and the wood with its
+beauty and wildness had passed away.  But as they climbed
+higher the country opened out, and there appeared, high on a
+hill to the right, Monteriano.  The hazy green of the olives
+rose up to its walls, and it seemed to float in isolation
+between trees and sky, like some fantastic ship city of a
+dream.  Its colour was brown, and it revealed not a single
+house--nothing but the narrow circle of the walls, and behind
+them seventeen towers--all that was left of the fifty-two
+that had filled the city in her prime.  Some were only
+stumps, some were inclining stiffly to their fall, some were
+still erect, piercing like masts into the blue.  It was
+impossible to praise it as beautiful, but it was also
+impossible to damn it as quaint.
+
+Meanwhile Philip talked continually, thinking this to be
+great evidence of resource and tact.  It showed Miss Abbott
+that he had probed her to the bottom, but was able to
+conquer his disgust, and by sheer force of intellect
+continue to be as agreeable and amusing as ever.  He did not
+know that he talked a good deal of nonsense, and that the
+sheer force of his intellect was weakened by the sight of
+Monteriano, and by the thought of dentistry within those walls.
+
+The town above them swung to the left, to the right, to
+the left again, as the road wound upward through the trees,
+and the towers began to glow in the descending sun.  As they
+drew near, Philip saw the heads of people gathering black
+upon the walls, and he knew well what was happening--how the
+news was spreading that a stranger was in sight, and the
+beggars were aroused from their content and bid to adjust
+their deformities; how the alabaster man was running for his
+wares, and the Authorized Guide running for his peaked cap
+and his two cards of recommendation--one from Miss M'Gee,
+Maida Vale, the other, less valuable, from an Equerry to the
+Queen of Peru; how some one else was running to tell the
+landlady of the Stella d'Italia to put on her pearl necklace
+and brown boots and empty the slops from the spare bedroom;
+and how the landlady was running to tell Lilia and her boy
+that their fate was at hand.
+
+Perhaps it was a pity Philip had talked so profusely. 
+He had driven Miss Abbott half demented, but he had given
+himself no time to concert a plan.  The end came so
+suddenly.  They emerged from the trees on to the terrace
+before the walk, with the vision of half Tuscany radiant in
+the sun behind them, and then they turned in through the
+Siena gate, and their journey was over.  The Dogana men
+admitted them with an air of gracious welcome, and they
+clattered up the narrow dark street, greeted by that mixture
+of curiosity and kindness which makes each Italian arrival
+so wonderful.
+
+He was stunned and knew not what to do.  At the hotel he
+received no ordinary reception.  The landlady wrung him by
+the hand; one person snatched his umbrella, another his bag;
+people pushed each other out of his way.  The entrance
+seemed blocked with a crowd.  Dogs were barking, bladder
+whistles being blown, women waving their handkerchiefs,
+excited children screaming on the stairs, and at the top of
+the stairs was Lilia herself, very radiant, with her best
+blouse on.
+
+"Welcome!" she cried.  "Welcome to Monteriano!"  He
+greeted her, for he did not know what else to do, and a
+sympathetic murmur rose from the crowd below.
+
+"You told me to come here," she continued, "and I don't
+forget it. Let me introduce Signor Carella!"
+
+Philip discerned in the corner behind her a young man who
+might eventually prove handsome and well-made, but certainly
+did not seem so then.  He was half enveloped in the drapery
+of a cold dirty curtain, and nervously stuck out a hand,
+which Philip took and found thick and damp.  There were more
+murmurs of approval from the stairs.
+
+"Well, din-din's nearly ready," said Lilia.  "Your
+room's down the passage, Philip.  You needn't go changing."
+
+He stumbled away to wash his hands, utterly crushed by
+her effrontery.
+
+"Dear Caroline!" whispered Lilia as soon as he had
+gone.  "What an angel you've been to tell him!  He takes it
+so well.  But you must have had a MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE."
+
+Miss Abbott's long terror suddenly turned into acidity. 
+"I've told nothing," she snapped.  "It's all for you--and if
+it only takes a quarter of an hour you'll be lucky!"
+
+Dinner was a nightmare.  They had the smelly dining-room
+to themselves.  Lilia, very smart and vociferous, was at the
+head of the table; Miss Abbott, also in her best, sat by
+Philip, looking, to his irritated nerves, more like the
+tragedy confidante every moment.  That scion of the Italian
+nobility, Signor Carella, sat opposite.  Behind him loomed a
+bowl of goldfish, who swam round and round, gaping at the guests.
+
+The face of Signor Carella was twitching too much for
+Philip to study it.  But he could see the hands, which were
+not particularly clean, and did not get cleaner by fidgeting
+amongst the shining slabs of hair.  His starched cuffs were
+not clean either, and as for his suit, it had obviously been
+bought for the occasion as something really English--a
+gigantic check, which did not even fit.  His handkerchief he
+had forgotten, but never missed it.  Altogether, he was
+quite unpresentable, and very lucky to have a father who was
+a dentist in Monteriano.  And why, even Lilia--But as soon as
+the meal began it furnished Philip with an explanation.
+
+For the youth was hungry, and his lady filled his plate
+with spaghetti, and when those delicious slippery worms were
+flying down his throat, his face relaxed and became for a
+moment unconscious and calm.  And Philip had seen that face
+before in Italy a hundred times--seen it and loved it, for it
+was not merely beautiful, but had the charm which is the
+rightful heritage of all who are born on that soil.  But he
+did not want to see it opposite him at dinner.  It was not
+the face of a gentleman.
+
+Conversation, to give it that name, was carried on in a
+mixture of English and Italian.  Lilia had picked up hardly
+any of the latter language, and Signor Carella had not yet
+learnt any of the former.  Occasionally Miss Abbott had to
+act as interpreter between the lovers, and the situation
+became uncouth and revolting in the extreme.  Yet Philip was
+too cowardly to break forth and denounce the engagement.  He
+thought he should be more effective with Lilia if he had her
+alone, and pretended to himself that he must hear her
+defence before giving judgment.
+
+Signor Carella, heartened by the spaghetti and the
+throat-rasping wine, attempted to talk, and, looking
+politely towards Philip, said, "England is a great country. 
+The Italians love England and the English."
+
+Philip, in no mood for international amenities, merely bowed.
+
+"Italy too," the other continued a little resentfully,
+"is a great country.  She has produced many famous men--for
+example Garibaldi and Dante.  The latter wrote the
+'Inferno,' the 'Purgatorio,' the 'Paradiso.' The 'Inferno'
+is the most beautiful."  And with the complacent tone of one
+who has received a solid education, he quoted the opening
+lines--
+
+  Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
+  Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
+  Che la diritta via era smarrita--
+
+a quotation which was more apt than he supposed.
+
+Lilia glanced at Philip to see whether he noticed that
+she was marrying no ignoramus.  Anxious to exhibit all the
+good qualities of her betrothed, she abruptly introduced the
+subject of pallone, in which, it appeared, he was a
+proficient player.  He suddenly became shy and developed a
+conceited grin--the grin of the village yokel whose cricket
+score is mentioned before a stranger.  Philip himself had
+loved to watch pallone, that entrancing combination of
+lawn-tennis and fives.  But he did not expect to love it
+quite so much again.
+
+"Oh, look!" exclaimed Lilia, "the poor wee fish!"
+
+A starved cat had been worrying them all for pieces of
+the purple quivering beef they were trying to swallow. 
+Signor Carella, with the brutality so common in Italians,
+had caught her by the paw and flung her away from him.  Now
+she had climbed up to the bowl and was trying to hook out
+the fish.  He got up, drove her off, and finding a large
+glass stopper by the bowl, entirely plugged up the aperture
+with it.
+
+"But may not the fish die?" said Miss Abbott.  "They
+have no air."
+
+"Fish live on water, not on air," he replied in a
+knowing voice, and sat down.  Apparently he was at his ease
+again, for he took to spitting on the floor.  Philip glanced
+at Lilia but did not detect her wincing.  She talked bravely
+till the end of the disgusting meal, and then got up saying,
+"Well, Philip, I am sure you are ready for by-bye.  We shall
+meet at twelve o'clock lunch tomorrow, if we don't meet
+before.  They give us caffe later in our rooms."
+
+It was a little too impudent.  Philip replied, "I should
+like to see you now, please, in my room, as I have come all
+the way on business."  He heard Miss Abbott gasp.  Signor
+Carella, who was lighting a rank cigar, had not understood.
+
+It was as he expected.  When he was alone with Lilia he
+lost all nervousness.  The remembrance of his long
+intellectual supremacy strengthened him, and he began volubly--
+
+"My dear Lilia, don't let's have a scene.  Before I
+arrived I thought I might have to question you.  It is
+unnecessary.  I know everything.  Miss Abbott has told me a
+certain amount, and the rest I see for myself."
+
+"See for yourself?" she exclaimed, and he remembered
+afterwards that she had flushed crimson.
+
+"That he is probably a ruffian and certainly a cad."
+
+"There are no cads in Italy," she said quickly.
+
+He was taken aback.  It was one of his own remarks.  And
+she further upset him by adding, "He is the son of a
+dentist.  Why not?"
+
+"Thank you for the information.  I know everything, as I
+told you before.  I am also aware of the social position of
+an Italian who pulls teeth in a minute provincial town."
+
+He was not aware of it, but he ventured to conclude that
+it was pretty, low.  Nor did Lilia contradict him.  But she
+was sharp enough to say, "Indeed, Philip, you surprise me. 
+I understood you went in for equality and so on."
+
+"And I understood that Signor Carella was a member of
+the Italian nobility."
+
+"Well, we put it like that in the telegram so as not to
+shock dear Mrs. Herriton.  But it is true.  He is a younger
+branch.  Of course families ramify--just as in yours there is
+your cousin Joseph."  She adroitly picked out the only
+undesirable member of the Herriton clan.  "Gino's father is
+courtesy itself, and rising rapidly in his profession.  This
+very month he leaves Monteriano, and sets up at Poggibonsi. 
+And for my own poor part, I think what people are is what
+matters, but I don't suppose you'll agree.  And I should
+like you to know that Gino's uncle is a priest--the same as a
+clergyman at home."
+
+Philip was aware of the social position of an Italian
+priest, and said so much about it that Lilia interrupted him
+with, "Well, his cousin's a lawyer at Rome."
+
+"What kind of 'lawyer'?"
+
+"Why, a lawyer just like you are--except that he has lots
+to do and can never get away."
+
+The remark hurt more than he cared to show.  He changed
+his method, and in a gentle, conciliating tone delivered the
+following speech:--
+
+"The whole thing is like a bad dream--so bad that it
+cannot go on.  If there was one redeeming feature about the
+man I might be uneasy.  As it is I can trust to time.  For
+the moment, Lilia, he has taken you in, but you will find
+him out soon.  It is not possible that you, a lady,
+accustomed to ladies and gentlemen, will tolerate a man
+whose position is--well, not equal to the son of the
+servants' dentist in Coronation Place.  I am not blaming you
+now.  But I blame the glamour of Italy--I have felt it
+myself, you know--and I greatly blame Miss Abbott."
+
+"Caroline!  Why blame her?  What's all this to do with Caroline?"
+
+"Because we expected her to--"  He saw that the answer
+would involve him in difficulties, and, waving his hand,
+continued, "So I am confident, and you in your heart agree,
+that this engagement will not last.  Think of your life at
+home--think of Irma!  And I'll also say think of us; for you
+know, Lilia, that we count you more than a relation.  I
+should feel I was losing my own sister if you did this, and
+my mother would lose a daughter."
+
+She seemed touched at last, for she turned away her face
+and said, "I can't break it off now!"
+
+"Poor Lilia," said he, genuinely moved.  "I know it may
+be painful.  But I have come to rescue you, and, book-worm
+though I may be, I am not frightened to stand up to a
+bully.  He's merely an insolent boy.  He thinks he can keep
+you to your word by threats.  He will be different when he
+sees he has a man to deal with."
+
+What follows should be prefaced with some simile--the
+simile of a powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake--for it
+blew Philip up in the air and flattened him on the ground
+and swallowed him up in the depths.  Lilia turned on her
+gallant defender and said--
+
+"For once in my life I'll thank you to leave me alone. 
+I'll thank your mother too.  For twelve years you've trained
+me and tortured me, and I'll stand it no more.  Do you think
+I'm a fool?  Do you think I never felt?  Ah!  when I came to
+your house a poor young bride, how you all looked me
+over--never a kind word--and discussed me, and thought I might
+just do; and your mother corrected me, and your sister
+snubbed me, and you said funny things about me to show how
+clever you were!  And when Charles died I was still to run
+in strings for the honour of your beastly family, and I was
+to be cooped up at Sawston and learn to keep house, and all
+my chances spoilt of marrying again.  No, thank you!  No,
+thank you!  'Bully?' 'Insolent boy?' Who's that, pray, but
+you?  But, thank goodness, I can stand up against the world
+now, for I've found Gino, and this time I marry for love!"
+
+The coarseness and truth of her attack alike overwhelmed
+him.  But her supreme insolence found him words, and he too
+burst forth.
+
+"Yes!  and I forbid you to do it!  You despise me,
+perhaps, and think I'm feeble.  But you're mistaken.  You
+are ungrateful and impertinent and contemptible, but I will
+save you in order to save Irma and our name.  There is going
+to be such a row in this town that you and he'll be sorry
+you came to it.  I shall shrink from nothing, for my blood
+is up. It is unwise of you to laugh.  I forbid you to marry
+Carella, and I shall tell him so now."
+
+"Do," she cried.  "Tell him so now.  Have it out with
+him.  Gino!  Gino!  Come in!  Avanti!  Fra Filippo forbids
+the banns!"
+
+Gino appeared so quickly that he must have been
+listening outside the door.
+
+"Fra Filippo's blood's up.  He shrinks from nothing. 
+Oh, take care he doesn't hurt you!"  She swayed about in
+vulgar imitation of Philip's walk, and then, with a proud
+glance at the square shoulders of her betrothed, flounced
+out of the room.
+
+Did she intend them to fight?  Philip had no intention
+of doing so; and no more, it seemed, had Gino, who stood
+nervously in the middle of the room with twitching lips and eyes.
+
+"Please sit down, Signor Carella," said Philip in
+Italian.  "Mrs. Herriton is rather agitated, but there is no
+reason we should not be calm.  Might I offer you a
+cigarette?  Please sit down."
+
+He refused the cigarette and the chair, and remained
+standing in the full glare of the lamp.  Philip, not averse
+to such assistance, got his own face into shadow.
+
+For a long time he was silent.  It might impress Gino,
+and it also gave him time to collect himself.  He would not
+this time fall into the error of blustering, which he had
+caught so unaccountably from Lilia.  He would make his power
+felt by restraint.
+
+Why, when he looked up to begin, was Gino convulsed with
+silent laughter?  It vanished immediately; but he became
+nervous, and was even more pompous than he intended.
+
+"Signor Carella, I will be frank with you.  I have come
+to prevent you marrying Mrs. Herriton, because I see you
+will both be unhappy together.  She is English, you are
+Italian; she is accustomed to one thing, you to another. 
+And--pardon me if I say it--she is rich and you are poor."
+
+"I am not marrying her because she is rich," was the
+sulky reply.
+
+"I never suggested that for a moment," said Philip
+courteously.  "You are honourable, I am sure; but are you
+wise?  And let me remind you that we want her with us at
+home.  Her little daughter will be motherless, our home will
+be broken up.  If you grant my request you will earn our
+thanks--and you will not be without a reward for your
+disappointment."
+
+"Reward--what reward?"  He bent over the back of a chair
+and looked earnestly at Philip.  They were coming to terms
+pretty quickly.  Poor Lilia!
+
+Philip said slowly, "What about a thousand lire?"
+
+His soul went forth into one exclamation, and then he
+was silent, with gaping lips.  Philip would have given
+double: he had expected a bargain.
+
+"You can have them tonight."
+
+He found words, and said, "It is too late."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because--"  His voice broke.  Philip watched his face,--a
+face without refinement perhaps, but not without
+expression,--watched it quiver and re-form and dissolve from
+emotion into emotion.  There was avarice at one moment, and
+insolence, and politeness, and stupidity, and cunning--and
+let us hope that sometimes there was love.  But gradually
+one emotion dominated, the most unexpected of all; for his
+chest began to heave and his eyes to wink and his mouth to
+twitch, and suddenly he stood erect and roared forth his
+whole being in one tremendous laugh.
+
+Philip sprang up, and Gino, who had flung wide his arms
+to let the glorious creature go, took him by the shoulders
+and shook him, and said, "Because we are
+married--married--married as soon as I knew you were, coming. 
+There was no time to tell you.  Oh. oh!  You have come all
+the way for nothing.  Oh!  And oh, your generosity!" 
+Suddenly he became grave, and said, "Please pardon me; I am
+rude.  I am no better than a peasant, and I--"  Here he saw
+Philip's face, and it was too much for him.  He gasped and
+exploded and crammed his hands into his mouth and spat them
+out in another explosion, and gave Philip an aimless push,
+which toppled him on to the bed.  He uttered a horrified
+Oh!  and then gave up, and bolted away down the passage,
+shrieking like a child, to tell the joke to his wife.
+
+For a time Philip lay on the bed, pretending to himself
+that he was hurt grievously.  He could scarcely see for
+temper, and in the passage he ran against Miss Abbott, who
+promptly burst into tears.
+
+"I sleep at the Globo," he told her, "and start for
+Sawston tomorrow morning early.  He has assaulted me.  I
+could prosecute him.  But shall not."
+
+"I can't stop here," she sobbed.  "I daren't stop here. 
+You will have to take me with you!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Opposite the Volterra gate of Monteriano, outside the city,
+is a very respectable white-washed mud wall, with a coping
+of red crinkled tiles to keep it from dissolution.  It would
+suggest a gentleman's garden if there was not in its middle
+a large hole, which grows larger with every rain-storm. 
+Through the hole is visible, firstly, the iron gate that is
+intended to close it; secondly, a square piece of ground
+which, though not quite, mud, is at the same time not
+exactly grass; and finally, another wall, stone this time,
+which has a wooden door in the middle and two
+wooden-shuttered windows each side, and apparently forms the
+facade of a one-storey house.
+
+This house is bigger than it looks, for it slides for
+two storeys down the hill behind, and the wooden door, which
+is always locked, really leads into the attic.  The knowing
+person prefers to follow the precipitous mule-track round
+the turn of the mud wall till he can take the edifice in the
+rear.  Then--being now on a level with the cellars--he lifts
+up his head and shouts.  If his voice sounds like something
+light--a letter, for example, or some vegetables, or a bunch
+of flowers--a basket is let out of the first-floor windows by
+a string, into which he puts his burdens and departs.  But
+if he sounds like something heavy, such as a log of wood, or
+a piece of meat, or a visitor, he is interrogated, and then
+bidden or forbidden to ascend.  The ground floor and the
+upper floor of that battered house are alike deserted, and
+the inmates keep the central portion, just as in a dying
+body all life retires to the heart.  There is a door at the
+top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is
+admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily
+cold.  There are several rooms, some dark and mostly
+stuffy--a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs,
+wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit--German bad
+taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also
+a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when
+the refining influence of hospitality is absent, and real
+bedrooms; and last, but not least, the loggia, where you can
+live day and night if you feel inclined, drinking vermouth
+and smoking cigarettes, with leagues of olive-trees and
+vineyards and blue-green hills to watch you.
+
+It was in this house that the brief and inevitable
+tragedy of Lilia's married life took place.  She made Gino
+buy it for her, because it was there she had first seen him
+sitting on the mud wall that faced the Volterra gate.  She
+remembered how the evening sun had struck his hair, and how
+he had smiled down at her, and being both sentimental and
+unrefined, was determined to have the man and the place
+together.  Things in Italy are cheap for an Italian, and,
+though he would have preferred a house in the piazza, or
+better still a house at Siena, or, bliss above bliss, a
+house at Leghorn, he did as she asked, thinking that perhaps
+she showed her good taste in preferring so retired an abode.
+
+The house was far too big for them, and there was a
+general concourse of his relatives to fill it up.  His
+father wished to make it a patriarchal concern, where all
+the family should have their rooms and meet together for
+meals, and was perfectly willing to give up the new practice
+at Poggibonsi and preside.  Gino was quite willing too, for
+he was an affectionate youth who liked a large home-circle,
+and he told it as a pleasant bit of news to Lilia, who did
+not attempt to conceal her horror.
+
+At once he was horrified too; saw that the idea was
+monstrous; abused himself to her for having suggested it;
+rushed off to tell his father that it was impossible.  His
+father complained that prosperity was already corrupting him
+and making him unsympathetic and hard; his mother cried; his
+sisters accused him of blocking their social advance.  He
+was apologetic, and even cringing, until they turned on
+Lilia.  Then he turned on them, saying that they could not
+understand, much less associate with, the English lady who
+was his wife; that there should be one master in that house--
+himself.
+
+Lilia praised and petted him on his return, calling him
+brave and a hero and other endearing epithets.  But he was
+rather blue when his clan left Monteriano in much dignity--a
+dignity which was not at all impaired by the acceptance of a
+cheque.  They took the cheque not to Poggibonsi, after all,
+but to Empoli--a lively, dusty town some twenty miles off. 
+There they settled down in comfort, and the sisters said
+they had been driven to it by Gino.
+
+The cheque was, of course, Lilia's, who was extremely
+generous, and was quite willing to know anybody so long as
+she had not to live with them, relations-in-law being on her
+nerves.  She liked nothing better than finding out some
+obscure and distant connection--there were several of
+them--and acting the lady bountiful, leaving behind her
+bewilderment, and too often discontent.  Gino wondered how
+it was that all his people, who had formerly seemed so
+pleasant, had suddenly become plaintive and disagreeable. 
+He put it down to his lady wife's magnificence, in
+comparison with which all seemed common.  Her money flew
+apace, in spite of the cheap living.  She was even richer
+than he expected; and he remembered with shame how he had
+once regretted his inability to accept the thousand lire
+that Philip Herriton offered him in exchange for her.  It
+would have been a shortsighted bargain.
+
+Lilia enjoyed settling into the house, with nothing to
+do except give orders to smiling workpeople, and a devoted
+husband as interpreter.  She wrote a jaunty account of her
+happiness to Mrs. Herriton, and Harriet answered the letter,
+saying (1) that all future communications should be
+addressed to the solicitors; (2) would Lilia return an
+inlaid box which Harriet had lent her--but not given--to keep
+handkerchiefs and collars in?
+
+"Look what I am giving up to live with you!" she said to
+Gino, never omitting to lay stress on her condescension.  He
+took her to mean the inlaid box, and said that she need not
+give it up at all.
+
+"Silly fellow, no!  I mean the life.  Those Herritons
+are very well connected.  They lead Sawston society.  But
+what do I care, so long as I have my silly fellow!"  She
+always treated him as a boy, which he was, and as a fool,
+which he was not, thinking herself so immeasurably superior
+to him that she neglected opportunity after opportunity of
+establishing her rule.  He was good-looking and indolent;
+therefore he must be stupid.  He was poor; therefore he
+would never dare to criticize his benefactress.  He was
+passionately in love with her; therefore she could do
+exactly as she liked.
+
+"It mayn't be heaven below," she thought, "but it's
+better than Charles."
+
+And all the time the boy was watching her, and growing up.
+
+She was reminded of Charles by a disagreeable letter
+from the solicitors, bidding her disgorge a large sum of
+money for Irma, in accordance with her late husband's will. 
+It was just like Charles's suspicious nature to have
+provided against a second marriage.  Gino was equally
+indignant, and between them they composed a stinging reply,
+which had no effect.  He then said that Irma had better come
+out and live with them.  "The air is good, so is the food;
+she will be happy here, and we shall not have to part with
+the money."  But Lilia had not the courage even to suggest
+this to the Herritons, and an unexpected terror seized her
+at the thought of Irma or any English child being educated
+at Monteriano.
+
+Gino became terribly depressed over the solicitors'
+letter, more depressed than she thought necessary.  There
+was no more to do in the house, and he spent whole days in
+the loggia leaning over the parapet or sitting astride it
+disconsolately.
+
+"Oh, you idle boy!" she cried, pinching his muscles. 
+"Go and play pallone."
+
+"I am a married man," he answered, without raising his
+head.  "I do not play games any more."
+
+"Go and see your friends then."
+
+"I have no friends now."
+
+"Silly, silly, silly!  You can't stop indoors all day!"
+
+"I want to see no one but you."  He spat on to an olive-tree.
+
+"Now, Gino, don't be silly.  Go and see your friends,
+and bring them to see me.  We both of us like society."
+
+He looked puzzled, but allowed himself to be persuaded,
+went out, found that he was not as friendless as he
+supposed, and returned after several hours in altered
+spirits.  Lilia congratulated herself on her good management.
+
+"I'm ready, too, for people now," she said.  "I mean to
+wake you all up, just as I woke up Sawston.  Let's have
+plenty of men--and make them bring their womenkind.  I mean
+to have real English tea-parties."
+
+"There is my aunt and her husband; but I thought you did
+not want to receive my relatives."
+
+"I never said such a--"
+
+"But you would be right," he said earnestly.  "They are
+not for you.  Many of them are in trade, and even we are
+little more; you should have gentlefolk and nobility for
+your friends."
+
+"Poor fellow," thought Lilia.  "It is sad for him to
+discover that his people are vulgar."  She began to tell him
+that she loved him just for his silly self, and he flushed
+and began tugging at his moustache.
+
+"But besides your relatives I must have other people
+here.  Your friends have wives and sisters, haven't they?"
+
+"Oh, yes; but of course I scarcely know them."
+
+"Not know your friends' people?"
+
+"Why, no.  If they are poor and have to work for their
+living I may see them--but not otherwise.  Except--"  He
+stopped.  The chief exception was a young lady, to whom he
+had once been introduced for matrimonial purposes.  But the
+dowry had proved inadequate, and the acquaintance terminated.
+
+"How funny!  But I mean to change all that.  Bring your
+friends to see me, and I will make them bring their people."
+
+He looked at her rather hopelessly.
+
+"Well, who are the principal people here?  Who leads society?"
+
+The governor of the prison, he supposed, and the
+officers who assisted him.
+
+"Well, are they married?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There we are.  Do you know them?"
+
+"Yes--in a way."
+
+"I see," she exclaimed angrily.  "They look down on you,
+do they, poor boy?  Wait!"  He assented.  "Wait!  I'll soon
+stop that.  Now, who else is there?"
+
+"The marchese, sometimes, and the canons of the
+Collegiate Church."
+
+"Married?"
+
+"The canons--" he began with twinkling eyes.
+
+"Oh, I forgot your horrid celibacy.  In England they
+would be the centre of everything.  But why shouldn't I know
+them?  Would it make it easier if I called all round?  Isn't
+that your foreign way?"
+
+He did not think it would make it easier.
+
+"But I must know some one!  Who were the men you were
+talking to this afternoon?"
+
+Low-class men.  He could scarcely recollect their names.
+
+"But, Gino dear, if they're low class, why did you talk
+to them?  Don't you care about your position?"
+
+All Gino cared about at present was idleness and
+pocket-money, and his way of expressing it was to exclaim,
+"Ouf-pouf!  How hot it is in here.  No air; I sweat all
+over.  I expire.  I must cool myself, or I shall never get
+to sleep."  In his funny abrupt way he ran out on to the
+loggia, where he lay full length on the parapet, and began
+to smoke and spit under the silence of the stars.
+
+Lilia gathered somehow from this conversation that
+Continental society was not the go-as-you-please thing she
+had expected.  Indeed she could not see where Continental
+society was.  Italy is such a delightful place to live in if
+you happen to be a man.  There one may enjoy that exquisite
+luxury of Socialism--that true Socialism which is based not
+on equality of income or character, but on the equality of
+manners.  In the democracy of the caffe or the street the
+great question of our life has been solved, and the
+brotherhood of man is a reality.  But is accomplished at the
+expense of the sisterhood of women.  Why should you not make
+friends with your neighbour at the theatre or in the train,
+when you know and he knows that feminine criticism and
+feminine insight and feminine prejudice will never come
+between you?  Though you become as David and Jonathan, you
+need never enter his home, nor he yours.  All your lives you
+will meet under the open air, the only roof-tree of the
+South, under which he will spit and swear, and you will drop
+your h's, and nobody will think the worse of either.
+
+Meanwhile the women--they have, of course, their house
+and their church, with its admirable and frequent services,
+to which they are escorted by the maid.  Otherwise they do
+not go out much, for it is not genteel to walk, and you are
+too poor to keep a carriage.  Occasionally you will take
+them to the caffe or theatre, and immediately all your
+wonted acquaintance there desert you, except those few who
+are expecting and expected to marry into your family.  It is
+all very sad.  But one consolation emerges--life is very
+pleasant in Italy if you are a man.
+
+Hitherto Gino had not interfered with Lilia.  She was so
+much older than he was, and so much richer, that he regarded
+her as a superior being who answered to other laws.  He was
+not wholly surprised, for strange rumours were always
+blowing over the Alps of lands where men and women had the
+same amusements and interests, and he had often met that
+privileged maniac, the lady tourist, on her solitary walks. 
+Lilia took solitary walks too, and only that week a tramp
+had grabbed at her watch--an episode which is supposed to be
+indigenous in Italy, though really less frequent there than
+in Bond Street.  Now that he knew her better, he was
+inevitably losing his awe: no one could live with her and
+keep it, especially when she had been so silly as to lose a
+gold watch and chain.  As he lay thoughtful along the
+parapet, he realized for the first time the responsibilities
+of monied life.  He must save her from dangers, physical and
+social, for after all she was a woman.  "And I," he
+reflected, "though I am young, am at all events a man, and
+know what is right."
+
+He found her still in the living-room, combing her hair,
+for she had something of the slattern in her nature, and
+there was no need to keep up appearances.
+
+"You must not go out alone," he said gently.  "It is not
+safe.  If you want to walk, Perfetta shall accompany you." 
+Perfetta was a widowed cousin, too humble for social
+aspirations, who was living with them as factotum.
+
+"Very well," smiled Lilia, "very well"--as if she were
+addressing a solicitous kitten.  But for all that she never
+took a solitary walk again, with one exception, till the day
+of her death.
+
+Days passed, and no one called except poor relatives. 
+She began to feel dull.  Didn't he know the Sindaco or the
+bank manager?  Even the landlady of the Stella d'Italia
+would be better than no one.  She, when she went into the
+town, was pleasantly received; but people naturally found a
+difficulty in getting on with a lady who could not learn
+their language.  And the tea-party, under Gino's adroit
+management, receded ever and ever before her.
+
+He had a good deal of anxiety over her welfare, for she
+did not settle down in the house at all.  But he was
+comforted by a welcome and unexpected visitor.  As he was
+going one afternoon for the letters--they were delivered at
+the door, but it took longer to get them at the office--some
+one humorously threw a cloak over his head, and when he
+disengaged himself he saw his very dear friend Spiridione
+Tesi of the custom-house at Chiasso, whom he had not met for
+two years.  What joy!  what salutations!  so that all the
+passersby smiled with approval on the amiable scene. 
+Spiridione's brother was now station-master at Bologna, and
+thus he himself could spend his holiday travelling over
+Italy at the public expense.  Hearing of Gino's marriage, he
+had come to see him on his way to Siena, where lived his own
+uncle, lately monied too.
+
+"They all do it," he exclaimed, "myself excepted."  He
+was not quite twenty-three.  "But tell me more.  She is
+English.  That is good, very good.  An English wife is very
+good indeed.  And she is rich?"
+
+"Immensely rich."
+
+"Blonde or dark?"
+
+"Blonde."
+
+"Is it possible!"
+
+"It pleases me very much," said Gino simply.  "If you
+remember, I always desired a blonde."  Three or four men had
+collected, and were listening.
+
+"We all desire one," said Spiridione.  "But you, Gino,
+deserve your good fortune, for you are a good son, a brave
+man, and a true friend, and from the very first moment I saw
+you I wished you well."
+
+"No compliments, I beg," said Gino, standing with his
+hands crossed on his chest and a smile of pleasure on his face.
+
+Spiridione addressed the other men, none of whom he had
+ever seen before.  "Is it not true?  Does not he deserve
+this wealthy blonde?"
+
+"He does deserve her," said all the men.
+
+It is a marvellous land, where you love it or hate it.
+
+There were no letters, and of course they sat down at
+the Caffe Garibaldi, by the Collegiate Church--quite a good
+caffe that for so small a city.  There were marble-topped
+tables, and pillars terra-cotta below and gold above, and on
+the ceiling was a fresco of the battle of Solferino.  One
+could not have desired a prettier room.  They had vermouth
+and little cakes with sugar on the top, which they chose
+gravely at the counter, pinching them first to be sure they
+were fresh.  And though vermouth is barely alcoholic,
+Spiridione drenched his with soda-water to be sure that it
+should not get into his head.
+
+They were in high spirits, and elaborate compliments
+alternated curiously with gentle horseplay.  But soon they
+put up their legs on a pair of chairs and began to smoke.
+
+"Tell me," said Spiridione--"I forgot to ask--is she young?"
+
+"Thirty-three."
+
+"Ah, well, we cannot have everything."
+
+"But you would be surprised.  Had she told me
+twenty-eight, I should not have disbelieved her."
+
+"Is she SIMPATICA?" (Nothing will translate that word.)
+
+Gino dabbed at the sugar and said after a silence,
+"Sufficiently so."
+
+"It is a most important thing."
+
+"She is rich, she is generous, she is affable, she
+addresses her inferiors without haughtiness."
+
+There was another silence.  "It is not sufficient," said
+the other.  "One does not define it thus."  He lowered his
+voice to a whisper.  "Last month a German was smuggling
+cigars.  The custom-house was dark.  Yet I refused because I
+did not like him.  The gifts of such men do not bring
+happiness.  NON ERA SIMPATICO.  He paid for every one, and
+the fine for deception besides."
+
+"Do you gain much beyond your pay?" asked Gino, diverted
+for an instant.
+
+"I do not accept small sums now.  It is not worth the
+risk.  But the German was another matter.  But listen, my
+Gino, for I am older than you and more full of experience. 
+The person who understands us at first sight, who never
+irritates us, who never bores, to whom we can pour forth
+every thought and wish, not only in speech but in
+silence--that is what I mean by SIMPATICO."
+
+"There are such men, I know," said Gino.  "And I have
+heard it said of children.  But where will you find such a woman?"
+
+"That is true.  Here you are wiser than I. SONO POCO
+SIMPATICHE LE DONNE.  And the time we waste over them is
+much."  He sighed dolefully, as if he found the nobility of
+his sex a burden.
+
+"One I have seen who may be so.  She spoke very little,
+but she was a young lady--different to most.  She, too, was
+English, the companion of my wife here.  But Fra Filippo,
+the brother-in-law, took her back with him.  I saw them
+start.  He was very angry."
+
+Then he spoke of his exciting and secret marriage, and
+they made fun of the unfortunate Philip, who had travelled
+over Europe to stop it.
+
+"I regret though," said Gino, when they had finished
+laughing, "that I toppled him on to the bed.  A great tall
+man!  And when I am really amused I am often impolite."
+
+"You will never see him again," said Spiridione, who
+carried plenty of philosophy about him.  "And by now the
+scene will have passed from his mind."
+
+"It sometimes happens that such things are recollected
+longest.  I shall never see him again, of course; but it is
+no benefit to me that he should wish me ill.  And even if he
+has forgotten, I am still sorry that I toppled him on to the
+bed."
+
+So their talk continued, at one moment full of
+childishness and tender wisdom, the next moment scandalously
+gross.  The shadows of the terra-cotta pillars lengthened,
+and tourists, flying through the Palazzo Pubblico opposite,
+could observe how the Italians wasted time.
+
+The sight of tourists reminded Gino of something he
+might say.  "I want to consult you since you are so kind as
+to take an interest in my affairs.  My wife wishes to take
+solitary walks."
+
+Spiridione was shocked.
+
+"But I have forbidden her."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"She does not yet understand.  She asked me to accompany
+her sometimes--to walk without object!  You know, she would
+like me to be with her all day."
+
+"I see.  I see."  He knitted his brows and tried to
+think how he could help his friend.  "She needs employment. 
+Is she a Catholic?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That is a pity.  She must be persuaded.  It will be a
+great solace to her when she is alone."
+
+"I am a Catholic, but of course I never go to church."
+
+"Of course not.  Still, you might take her at first. 
+That is what my brother has done with his wife at Bologna
+and he has joined the Free Thinkers.  He took her once or
+twice himself, and now she has acquired the habit and
+continues to go without him."
+
+"Most excellent advice, and I thank you for it.  But she
+wishes to give tea-parties--men and women together whom she
+has never seen."
+
+"Oh, the English!  they are always thinking of tea. 
+They carry it by the kilogramme in their trunks, and they
+are so clumsy that they always pack it at the top.  But it
+is absurd!"
+
+"What am I to do about it?"
+
+"Do nothing.  Or ask me!"
+
+"Come!" cried Gino, springing up.  "She will be quite pleased."
+
+The dashing young fellow coloured crimson.  "Of course I
+was only joking."
+
+"I know.  But she wants me to take my friends.  Come
+now!  Waiter!"
+
+"If I do come," cried the other, "and take tea with you,
+this bill must be my affair."
+
+"Certainly not; you are in my country!"
+
+A long argument ensued, in which the waiter took part,
+suggesting various solutions.  At last Gino triumphed.  The
+bill came to eightpence-halfpenny, and a halfpenny for the
+waiter brought it up to ninepence.  Then there was a shower
+of gratitude on one side and of deprecation on the other,
+and when courtesies were at their height they suddenly
+linked arms and swung down the street, tickling each other
+with lemonade straws as they went.
+
+Lilia was delighted to see them, and became more
+animated than Gino had known her for a long time.  The tea
+tasted of chopped hay, and they asked to be allowed to drink
+it out of a wine-glass, and refused milk; but, as she
+repeatedly observed, this was something like.  Spiridione's
+manners were very agreeable.  He kissed her hand on
+introduction, and as his profession had taught him a little
+English, conversation did not flag.
+
+"Do you like music?" she asked.
+
+"Passionately," he replied.  "I have not studied
+scientific music, but the music of the heart, yes."
+
+So she played on the humming piano very badly, and he
+sang, not so badly.  Gino got out a guitar and sang too,
+sitting out on the loggia.  It was a most agreeable visit.
+
+Gino said he would just walk his friend back to his
+lodgings.  As they went he said, without the least trace of
+malice or satire in his voice, "I think you are quite
+right.  I shall not bring people to the house any more.  I
+do not see why an English wife should be treated
+differently.  This is Italy."
+
+"You are very wise," exclaimed the other; "very wise
+indeed.  The more precious a possession the more carefully
+it should be guarded."
+
+They had reached the lodging, but went on as far as the
+Caffe Garibaldi, where they spent a long and most delightful
+evening.
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is
+impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not." 
+At no one moment did Lilia realize that her marriage was a
+failure; yet during the summer and autumn she became as
+unhappy as it was possible for her nature to be.  She had no
+unkind treatment, and few unkind words, from her husband. 
+He simply left her alone.  In the morning he went out to do
+"business," which, as far as she could discover, meant
+sitting in the Farmacia.  He usually returned to lunch,
+after which he retired to another room and slept.  In the
+evening he grew vigorous again, and took the air on the
+ramparts, often having his dinner out, and seldom returning
+till midnight or later.  There were, of course, the times
+when he was away altogether--at Empoli, Siena, Florence,
+Bologna--for he delighted in travel, and seemed to pick up
+friends all over the country.  Lilia often heard what a
+favorite he was.
+
+She began to see that she must assert herself, but she
+could not see how.  Her self-confidence, which had
+overthrown Philip, had gradually oozed away.  If she left
+the strange house there was the strange little town.  If she
+were to disobey her husband and walk in the country, that
+would be stranger still--vast slopes of olives and vineyards,
+with chalk-white farms, and in the distance other slopes,
+with more olives and more farms, and more little towns
+outlined against the cloudless sky.  "I don't call this
+country," she would say.  "Why, it's not as wild as Sawston
+Park!"  And, indeed, there was scarcely a touch of wildness
+in it--some of those slopes had been under cultivation for
+two thousand years.  But it was terrible and mysterious all
+the same, and its continued presence made Lilia so
+uncomfortable that she forgot her nature and began to reflect.
+
+She reflected chiefly about her marriage.  The ceremony
+had been hasty and expensive, and the rites, whatever they
+were, were not those of the Church of England.  Lilia had no
+religion in her; but for hours at a time she would be seized
+with a vulgar fear that she was not "married properly," and
+that her social position in the next world might be as
+obscure as it was in this.  It might be safer to do the
+thing thoroughly, and one day she took the advice of
+Spiridione and joined the Roman Catholic Church, or as she
+called it, "Santa Deodata's."  Gino approved; he, too,
+thought it safer, and it was fun confessing, though the
+priest was a stupid old man, and the whole thing was a good
+slap in the face for the people at home.
+
+The people at home took the slap very soberly; indeed,
+there were few left for her to give it to.  The Herritons
+were out of the question; they would not even let her write
+to Irma, though Irma was occasionally allowed to write to
+her.  Mrs. Theobald was rapidly subsiding into dotage, and,
+as far as she could be definite about anything, had
+definitely sided with the Herritons.  And Miss Abbott did
+likewise.  Night after night did Lilia curse this false
+friend, who had agreed with her that the marriage would
+"do," and that the Herritons would come round to it, and
+then, at the first hint of opposition, had fled back to
+England shrieking and distraught.  Miss Abbott headed the
+long list of those who should never be written to, and who
+should never be forgiven.  Almost the only person who was
+not on that list was Mr. Kingcroft, who had unexpectedly
+sent an affectionate and inquiring letter.  He was quite
+sure never to cross the Channel, and Lilia drew freely on
+her fancy in the reply.
+
+At first she had seen a few English people, for
+Monteriano was not the end of the earth.  One or two
+inquisitive ladies, who had heard at home of her quarrel
+with the Herritons, came to call.  She was very sprightly,
+and they thought her quite unconventional, and Gino a
+charming boy, so all that was to the good.  But by May the
+season, such as it was, had finished, and there would be no
+one till next spring.  As Mrs. Herriton had often observed,
+Lilia had no resources.  She did not like music, or reading,
+or work.  Her one qualification for life was rather blowsy
+high spirits, which turned querulous or boisterous according
+to circumstances.  She was not obedient, but she was
+cowardly, and in the most gentle way, which Mrs. Herriton
+might have envied, Gino made her do what he wanted.  At
+first it had been rather fun to let him get the upper hand. 
+But it was galling to discover that he could not do
+otherwise.  He had a good strong will when he chose to use
+it, and would not have had the least scruple in using bolts
+and locks to put it into effect.  There was plenty of
+brutality deep down in him, and one day Lilia nearly touched
+it.
+
+It was the old question of going out alone.
+
+"I always do it in England."
+
+"This is Italy."
+
+"Yes, but I'm older than you, and I'll settle."
+
+"I am your husband," he said, smiling.  They had
+finished their mid-day meal, and he wanted to go and sleep. 
+Nothing would rouse him up, until at last Lilia, getting
+more and more angry, said, "And I've got the money."
+
+He looked horrified.
+
+Now was the moment to assert herself.  She made the
+statement again.  He got up from his chair.
+
+"And you'd better mend your manners," she continued,
+"for you'd find it awkward if I stopped drawing cheques."
+
+She was no reader of character, but she quickly became
+alarmed.  As she said to Perfetta afterwards, "None of his
+clothes seemed to fit--too big in one place, too small in
+another."  His figure rather than his face altered, the
+shoulders falling forward till his coat wrinkled across the
+back and pulled away from his wrists.  He seemed all arms. 
+He edged round the table to where she was sitting, and she
+sprang away and held the chair between them, too frightened
+to speak or to move.  He looked at her with round,
+expressionless eyes, and slowly stretched out his left hand.
+
+Perfetta was heard coming up from the kitchen.  It
+seemed to wake him up, and he turned away and went to his
+room without a word.
+
+"What has happened?" cried Lilia, nearly fainting.  "He
+is ill--ill."
+
+Perfetta looked suspicious when she heard the account. 
+"What did you say to him?"  She crossed herself.
+
+"Hardly anything," said Lilia and crossed herself also. 
+Thus did the two women pay homage to their outraged male.
+
+It was clear to Lilia at last that Gino had married her
+for money.  But he had frightened her too much to leave any
+place for contempt.  His return was terrifying, for he was
+frightened too, imploring her pardon, lying at her feet,
+embracing her, murmuring "It was not I," striving to define
+things which he did not understand.  He stopped in the house
+for three days, positively ill with physical collapse.  But
+for all his suffering he had tamed her, and she never
+threatened to cut off supplies again.
+
+Perhaps he kept her even closer than convention
+demanded.  But he was very young, and he could not bear it
+to be said of him that he did not know how to treat a
+lady--or to manage a wife.  And his own social position was
+uncertain.  Even in England a dentist is a troublesome
+creature, whom careful people find difficult to class.  He
+hovers between the professions and the trades; he may be
+only a little lower than the doctors, or he may be down
+among the chemists, or even beneath them.  The son of the
+Italian dentist felt this too.  For himself nothing
+mattered; he made friends with the people he liked, for he
+was that glorious invariable creature, a man.  But his wife
+should visit nowhere rather than visit wrongly: seclusion
+was both decent and safe.  The social ideals of North and
+South had had their brief contention, and this time the
+South had won.
+
+It would have been well if he had been as strict over
+his own behaviour as he was over hers.  But the incongruity
+never occurred to him for a moment.  His morality was that
+of the average Latin, and as he was suddenly placed in the
+position of a gentleman, he did not see why he should not
+behave as such.  Of course, had Lilia been different--had she
+asserted herself and got a grip on his character--he might
+possibly--though not probably--have been made a better husband
+as well as a better man, and at all events he could have
+adopted the attitude of the Englishman, whose standard is
+higher even when his practice is the same.  But had Lilia
+been different she might not have married him.
+
+The discovery of his infidelity--which she made by
+accident--destroyed such remnants of self-satisfaction as her
+life might yet possess.  She broke down utterly and sobbed
+and cried in Perfetta's arms.  Perfetta was kind and even
+sympathetic, but cautioned her on no account to speak to
+Gino, who would be furious if he was suspected.  And Lilia
+agreed, partly because she was afraid of him, partly because
+it was, after all, the best and most dignified thing to do. 
+She had given up everything for him--her daughter, her
+relatives, her friends, all the little comforts and luxuries
+of a civilized life--and even if she had the courage to break
+away, there was no one who would receive her now.  The
+Herritons had been almost malignant in their efforts against
+her, and all her friends had one by one fallen off.  So it
+was better to live on humbly, trying not to feel,
+endeavouring by a cheerful demeanour to put things right. 
+"Perhaps," she thought, "if I have a child he will be
+different.  I know he wants a son."
+
+Lilia had achieved pathos despite herself, for there are
+some situations in which vulgarity counts no longer.  Not
+Cordelia nor Imogen more deserves our tears.
+
+She herself cried frequently, making herself look plain
+and old, which distressed her husband.  He was particularly
+kind to her when he hardly ever saw her, and she accepted
+his kindness without resentment, even with gratitude, so
+docile had she become.  She did not hate him, even as she
+had never loved him; with her it was only when she was
+excited that the semblance of either passion arose.  People
+said she was headstrong, but really her weak brain left her cold.
+
+Suffering, however, is more independent of temperament,
+and the wisest of women could hardly have suffered more.
+
+As for Gino, he was quite as boyish as ever, and carried
+his iniquities like a feather.  A favourite speech of his
+was, "Ah, one ought to marry!  Spiridione is wrong; I must
+persuade him.  Not till marriage does one realize the
+pleasures and the possibilities of life."  So saying, he
+would take down his felt hat, strike it in the right place
+as infallibly as a German strikes his in the wrong place,
+and leave her.
+
+One evening, when he had gone out thus, Lilia could
+stand it no longer.  It was September.  Sawston would be
+just filling up after the summer holidays.  People would be
+running in and out of each other's houses all along the
+road.  There were bicycle gymkhanas, and on the 30th Mrs.
+Herriton would be holding the annual bazaar in her garden
+for the C.M.S. It seemed impossible that such a free, happy
+life could exist.  She walked out on to the loggia. 
+Moonlight and stars in a soft purple sky.  The walls of
+Monteriano should be glorious on such a night as this.  But
+the house faced away from them.
+
+Perfetta was banging in the kitchen, and the stairs down
+led past the kitchen door.  But the stairs up to the
+attic--the stairs no one ever used--opened out of the
+living-room, and by unlocking the door at the top one might
+slip out to the square terrace above the house, and thus for
+ten minutes walk in freedom and peace.
+
+The key was in the pocket of Gino's best suit--the
+English check--which he never wore.  The stairs creaked and
+the key-hole screamed; but Perfetta was growing deaf.  The
+walls were beautiful, but as they faced west they were in
+shadow.  To see the light upon them she must walk round the
+town a little, till they were caught by the beams of the
+rising moon.  She looked anxiously at the house, and started.
+
+It was easy walking, for a little path ran all outside
+the ramparts.  The few people she met wished her a civil
+good-night, taking her, in her hatless condition, for a
+peasant.  The walls trended round towards the moon; and
+presently she came into its light, and saw all the rough
+towers turn into pillars of silver and black, and the
+ramparts into cliffs of pearl.  She had no great sense of
+beauty, but she was sentimental, and she began to cry; for
+here, where a great cypress interrupted the monotony of the
+girdle of olives, she had sat with Gino one afternoon in
+March, her head upon his shoulder, while Caroline was
+looking at the view and sketching.  Round the corner was the
+Siena gate, from which the road to England started, and she
+could hear the rumble of the diligence which was going down
+to catch the night train to Empoli.  The next moment it was
+upon her, for the highroad came towards her a little before
+it began its long zigzag down the hill.
+
+The driver slackened, and called to her to get in.  He
+did not know who she was.  He hoped she might be coming to
+the station.
+
+"Non vengo!" she cried.
+
+He wished her good-night, and turned his horses down the
+corner.  As the diligence came round she saw that it was empty.
+
+"Vengo . . ."
+
+Her voice was tremulous, and did not carry.  The horses
+swung off.
+
+"Vengo!  Vengo!"
+
+He had begun to sing, and heard nothing.  She ran down
+the road screaming to him to stop--that she was coming; while
+the distance grew greater and the noise of the diligence
+increased.  The man's back was black and square against the
+moon, and if he would but turn for an instant she would be
+saved.  She tried to cut off the corner of the zigzag,
+stumbling over the great clods of earth, large and hard as
+rocks, which lay between the eternal olives.  She was too
+late; for, just before she regained the road, the thing
+swept past her, thunderous, ploughing up choking clouds of
+moonlit dust.
+
+She did not call any more, for she felt very ill, and
+fainted; and when she revived she was lying in the road,
+with dust in her eyes, and dust in her mouth, and dust down
+her ears.  There is something very terrible in dust at night-time.
+
+"What shall I do?" she moaned.  "He will be so angry."
+
+And without further effort she slowly climbed back to
+captivity, shaking her garments as she went.
+
+Ill luck pursued her to the end.  It was one of the
+nights when Gino happened to come in.  He was in the
+kitchen, swearing and smashing plates, while Perfetta, her
+apron over her head, was weeping violently.  At the sight of
+Lilia he turned upon her and poured forth a flood of
+miscellaneous abuse.  He was far more angry but much less
+alarming than he had been that day when he edged after her
+round the table.  And Lilia gained more courage from her bad
+conscience than she ever had from her good one, for as he
+spoke she was seized with indignation and feared him no
+longer, and saw him for a cruel, worthless, hypocritical,
+dissolute upstart, and spoke in return.
+
+Perfetta screamed for she told him everything--all she
+knew and all she thought.  He stood with open mouth, all the
+anger gone out of him, feeling ashamed, and an utter fool. 
+He was fairly and rightfully cornered.  When had a husband
+so given himself away before?  She finished; and he was
+dumb, for she had spoken truly.  Then, alas!  the absurdity
+of his own position grew upon him, and he laughed--as he
+would have laughed at the same situation on the stage.
+
+"You laugh?" stammered Lilia.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, "who could help it?  I, who thought you
+knew and saw nothing--I am tricked--I am conquered.  I give
+in.  Let us talk of it no more."
+
+He touched her on the shoulder like a good comrade, half
+amused and half penitent, and then, murmuring and smiling to
+himself, ran quietly out of the room.
+
+Perfetta burst into congratulations.  "What courage you
+have!" she cried; "and what good fortune!  He is angry no
+longer!  He has forgiven you!"
+
+Neither Perfetta, nor Gino, nor Lilia herself knew the
+true reason of all the misery that followed.  To the end he
+thought that kindness and a little attention would be enough
+to set things straight.  His wife was a very ordinary woman,
+and why should her ideas differ from his own?  No one
+realized that more than personalities were engaged; that the
+struggle was national; that generations of ancestors, good,
+bad, or indifferent, forbad the Latin man to be chivalrous
+to the northern woman, the northern woman to forgive the
+Latin man.  All this might have been foreseen: Mrs. Herriton
+foresaw it from the first.
+
+Meanwhile Lilia prided herself on her high personal
+standard, and Gino simply wondered why she did not come
+round.  He hated discomfort and yearned for sympathy, but
+shrank from mentioning his difficulties in the town in case
+they were put down to his own incompetence.  Spiridione was
+told, and replied in a philosophical but not very helpful
+letter.  His other great friend, whom he trusted more, was
+still serving in Eritrea or some other desolate outpost. 
+And, besides, what was the good of letters?  Friends cannot
+travel through the post.
+
+Lilia, so similar to her husband in many ways, yearned
+for comfort and sympathy too.  The night he laughed at her
+she wildly took up paper and pen and wrote page after page,
+analysing his character, enumerating his iniquities,
+reporting whole conversations, tracing all the causes and
+the growth of her misery.  She was beside herself with
+passion, and though she could hardly think or see, she
+suddenly attained to magnificence and pathos which a
+practised stylist might have envied.  It was written like a
+diary, and not till its conclusion did she realize for whom
+it was meant.
+
+"Irma, darling Irma, this letter is for you.  I almost
+forgot I have a daughter.  It will make you unhappy, but I
+want you to know everything, and you cannot learn things too
+soon.  God bless you, my dearest, and save you.  God bless
+your miserable mother."
+
+Fortunately Mrs. Herriton was in when the letter
+arrived.  She seized it and opened it in her bedroom. 
+Another moment, and Irma's placid childhood would have been
+destroyed for ever.
+
+Lilia received a brief note from Harriet, again
+forbidding direct communication between mother and daughter,
+and concluding with formal condolences.  It nearly drove her
+mad.
+
+"Gently!  gently!" said her husband.  They were sitting
+together on the loggia when the letter arrived.  He often
+sat with her now, watching her for hours, puzzled and
+anxious, but not contrite.
+
+"It's nothing."  She went in and tore it up, and then
+began to write--a very short letter, whose gist was "Come and
+save me."
+
+It is not good to see your wife crying when she
+writes--especially if you are conscious that, on the whole,
+your treatment of her has been reasonable and kind.  It is
+not good, when you accidentally look over her shoulder, to
+see that she is writing to a man.  Nor should she shake her
+fist at you when she leaves the room, under the impression
+that you are engaged in lighting a cigar and cannot see her.
+
+Lilia went to the post herself.  But in Italy so many
+things can be arranged.  The postman was a friend of Gino's,
+and Mr. Kingcroft never got his letter.
+
+So she gave up hope, became ill, and all through the
+autumn lay in bed.  Gino was distracted.  She knew why; he
+wanted a son.  He could talk and think of nothing else.  His
+one desire was to become the father of a man like himself,
+and it held him with a grip he only partially understood,
+for it was the first great desire, the first great passion
+of his life.  Falling in love was a mere physical
+triviality, like warm sun or cool water, beside this divine
+hope of immortality: "I continue."  He gave candles to Santa
+Deodata, for he was always religious at a crisis, and
+sometimes he went to her himself and prayed the crude
+uncouth demands of the simple.  Impetuously he summoned all
+his relatives back to bear him company in his time of need,
+and Lilia saw strange faces flitting past her in the
+darkened room.
+
+"My love!" he would say, "my dearest Lilia!  Be calm.  I
+have never loved any one but you."
+
+She, knowing everything, would only smile gently, too
+broken by suffering to make sarcastic repartees.
+
+Before the child was born he gave her a kiss, and said,
+"I have prayed all night for a boy."
+
+Some strangely tender impulse moved her, and she said
+faintly, "You are a boy yourself, Gino."
+
+He answered, "Then we shall be brothers."
+
+He lay outside the room with his head against the door
+like a dog.  When they came to tell him the glad news they
+found him half unconscious, and his face was wet with tears.
+
+As for Lilia, some one said to her, "It is a beautiful
+boy!"  But she had died in giving birth to him.
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+At the time of Lilia's death Philip Herriton was just
+twenty-four years of age--indeed the news reached Sawston on
+his birthday.  He was a tall, weakly-built young man, whose
+clothes had to be judiciously padded on the shoulders in
+order to make him pass muster.  His face was plain rather
+than not, and there was a curious mixture in it of good and
+bad.  He had a fine forehead and a good large nose, and both
+observation and sympathy were in his eyes.  But below the
+nose and eyes all was confusion, and those people who
+believe that destiny resides in the mouth and chin shook
+their heads when they looked at him.
+
+Philip himself, as a boy, had been keenly conscious of
+these defects.  Sometimes when he had been bullied or
+hustled about at school he would retire to his cubicle and
+examine his features in a looking-glass, and he would sigh
+and say, "It is a weak face.  I shall never carve a place
+for myself in the world."  But as years went on he became
+either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied.  The
+world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every
+one.  Decision of character might come later--or he might
+have it without knowing.  At all events he had got a sense
+of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable gifts. 
+The sense of beauty developed first.  It caused him at the
+age of twenty to wear parti-coloured ties and a squashy hat,
+to be late for dinner on account of the sunset, and to catch
+art from Burne-Jones to Praxiteles.  At twenty-two he went
+to Italy with some cousins, and there he absorbed into one
+aesthetic whole olive-trees, blue sky, frescoes, country
+inns, saints, peasants, mosaics, statues, beggars.  He came
+back with the air of a prophet who would either remodel
+Sawston or reject it.  All the energies and enthusiasms of a
+rather friendless life had passed into the championship of beauty.
+
+In a short time it was over.  Nothing had happened
+either in Sawston or within himself.  He had shocked
+half-a-dozen people, squabbled with his sister, and bickered
+with his mother.  He concluded that nothing could happen,
+not knowing that human love and love of truth sometimes
+conquer where love of beauty fails.
+
+A little disenchanted, a little tired, but aesthetically
+intact, he resumed his placid life, relying more and more on
+his second gift, the gift of humour.  If he could not reform
+the world, he could at all events laugh at it, thus
+attaining at least an intellectual superiority.  Laughter,
+he read and believed, was a sign of good moral health, and
+he laughed on contentedly, till Lilia's marriage toppled
+contentment down for ever.  Italy, the land of beauty, was
+ruined for him.  She had no power to change men and things
+who dwelt in her.  She, too, could produce avarice,
+brutality, stupidity--and, what was worse, vulgarity.  It was
+on her soil and through her influence that a silly woman had
+married a cad.  He hated Gino, the betrayer of his life's
+ideal, and now that the sordid tragedy had come, it filled
+him with pangs, not of sympathy, but of final disillusion.
+
+The disillusion was convenient for Mrs. Herriton, who
+saw a trying little period ahead of her, and was glad to
+have her family united.
+
+"Are we to go into mourning, do you think?"  She always
+asked her children's advice where possible.
+
+Harriet thought that they should.  She had been
+detestable to Lilia while she lived, but she always felt
+that the dead deserve attention and sympathy.  "After all
+she has suffered.  That letter kept me awake for nights. 
+The whole thing is like one of those horrible modern plays
+where no one is in 'the right.'  But if we have mourning, it
+will mean telling Irma."
+
+"Of course we must tell Irma!" said Philip.
+
+"Of course," said his mother.  "But I think we can still
+not tell her about Lilia's marriage."
+
+"I don't think that.  And she must have suspected
+something by now."
+
+"So one would have supposed.  But she never cared for
+her mother, and little girls of nine don't reason clearly. 
+She looks on it as a long visit.  And it is important, most
+important, that she should not receive a shock.  All a
+child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. 
+Destroy that and everything goes--morals, behaviour,
+everything.  Absolute trust in some one else is the essence
+of education.  That is why I have been so careful about
+talking of poor Lilia before her."
+
+"But you forget this wretched baby.  Waters and Adamson
+write that there is a baby."
+
+"Mrs. Theobald must be told.  But she doesn't count. 
+She is breaking up very quickly.  She doesn't even see Mr.
+Kingcroft now.  He, thank goodness, I hear, has at last
+consoled himself with someone else."
+
+"The child must know some time," persisted Philip, who
+felt a little displeased, though he could not tell with what.
+
+"The later the better.  Every moment she is developing."
+
+"I must say it seems rather hard luck, doesn't it?"
+
+"On Irma?  Why?"
+
+"On us, perhaps.  We have morals and behaviour also, and
+I don't think this continual secrecy improves them."
+
+"There's no need to twist the thing round to that," said
+Harriet, rather disturbed.
+
+"Of course there isn't," said her mother.  "Let's keep
+to the main issue.  This baby's quite beside the point. 
+Mrs. Theobald will do nothing, and it's no concern of ours."
+
+"It will make a difference in the money, surely," said he.
+
+"No, dear; very little.  Poor Charles provided for every
+kind of contingency in his will.  The money will come to you
+and Harriet, as Irma's guardians."
+
+"Good.  Does the Italian get anything?"
+
+"He will get all hers.  But you know what that is."
+
+"Good.  So those are our tactics--to tell no one about
+the baby, not even Miss Abbott."
+
+"Most certainly this is the proper course," said Mrs.
+Herriton, preferring "course" to "tactics" for Harriet's
+sake.  "And why ever should we tell Caroline?"
+
+"She was so mixed up in the affair."
+
+"Poor silly creature.  The less she hears about it the
+better she will be pleased.  I have come to be very sorry
+for Caroline.  She, if any one, has suffered and been
+penitent.  She burst into tears when I told her a little,
+only a little, of that terrible letter.  I never saw such
+genuine remorse.  We must forgive her and forget.  Let the
+dead bury their dead.  We will not trouble her with them."
+
+Philip saw that his mother was scarcely logical.  But
+there was no advantage in saying so.  "Here beginneth the
+New Life, then.  Do you remember, mother, that was what we
+said when we saw Lilia off?"
+
+"Yes, dear; but now it is really a New Life, because we
+are all at accord.  Then you were still infatuated with
+Italy.  It may be full of beautiful pictures and churches,
+but we cannot judge a country by anything but its men."
+
+"That is quite true," he said sadly.  And as the tactics
+were now settled, he went out and took an aimless and
+solitary walk.
+
+By the time he came back two important things had
+happened.  Irma had been told of her mother's death, and
+Miss Abbott, who had called for a subscription, had been
+told also.
+
+Irma had wept loudly, had asked a few sensible questions
+and a good many silly ones, and had been content with
+evasive answers.  Fortunately the school prize-giving was at
+hand, and that, together with the prospect of new black
+clothes, kept her from meditating on the fact that Lilia,
+who had been absent so long, would now be absent for ever.
+
+"As for Caroline," said Mrs. Herriton, "I was almost
+frightened.  She broke down utterly.  She cried even when
+she left the house.  I comforted her as best I could, and I
+kissed her.  It is something that the breach between her and
+ourselves is now entirely healed."
+
+"Did she ask no questions--as to the nature of Lilia's
+death, I mean?"
+
+"She did.  But she has a mind of extraordinary
+delicacy.  She saw that I was reticent, and she did not
+press me.  You see, Philip, I can say to you what I could
+not say before Harriet.  Her ideas are so crude.  Really we
+do not want it known in Sawston that there is a baby.  All
+peace and comfort would be lost if people came inquiring
+after it."
+
+His mother knew how to manage him.  He agreed
+enthusiastically.  And a few days later, when he chanced to
+travel up to London with Miss Abbott, he had all the time
+the pleasant thrill of one who is better informed.  Their
+last journey together had been from Monteriano back across
+Europe.  It had been a ghastly journey, and Philip, from the
+force of association, rather expected something ghastly now.
+
+He was surprised.  Miss Abbott, between Sawston and
+Charing Cross, revealed qualities which he had never guessed
+her to possess.  Without being exactly original, she did
+show a commendable intelligence, and though at times she was
+gauche and even uncourtly, he felt that here was a person
+whom it might be well to cultivate.
+
+At first she annoyed him.  They were talking, of course,
+about Lilia, when she broke the thread of vague
+commiseration and said abruptly, "It is all so strange as
+well as so tragic.  And what I did was as strange as anything."
+
+It was the first reference she had ever made to her
+contemptible behaviour.  "Never mind," he said.  "It's all
+over now.  Let the dead bury their dead.  It's fallen out of
+our lives."
+
+"But that's why I can talk about it and tell you
+everything I have always wanted to.  You thought me stupid
+and sentimental and wicked and mad, but you never really
+knew how much I was to blame."
+
+"Indeed I never think about it now," said Philip
+gently.  He knew that her nature was in the main generous
+and upright: it was unnecessary for her to reveal her thoughts.
+
+"The first evening we got to Monteriano," she persisted,
+"Lilia went out for a walk alone, saw that Italian in a
+picturesque position on a wall, and fell in love.  He was
+shabbily dressed, and she did not even know he was the son
+of a dentist.  I must tell you I was used to this sort of
+thing.  Once or twice before I had had to send people about
+their business."
+
+"Yes; we counted on you," said Philip, with sudden
+sharpness.  After all, if she would reveal her thoughts, she
+must take the consequences.
+
+"I know you did," she retorted with equal sharpness. 
+"Lilia saw him several times again, and I knew I ought to
+interfere.  I called her to my bedroom one night.  She was
+very frightened, for she knew what it was about and how
+severe I could be.  'Do you love this man?' I asked.  'Yes
+or no?' She said 'Yes.' And I said, 'Why don't you marry him
+if you think you'll be happy?' "
+
+"Really--really," exploded Philip, as exasperated as if
+the thing had happened yesterday.  "You knew Lilia all your
+life.  Apart from everything else--as if she could choose
+what could make her happy!"
+
+"Had you ever let her choose?" she flashed out.  "I'm
+afraid that's rude," she added, trying to calm herself.
+
+"Let us rather say unhappily expressed," said Philip,
+who always adopted a dry satirical manner when he was puzzled.
+
+"I want to finish.  Next morning I found Signor Carella
+and said the same to him.  He--well, he was willing.  That's all."
+
+"And the telegram?"  He looked scornfully out of the window.
+
+Hitherto her voice had been hard, possibly in
+self-accusation, possibly in defiance.  Now it became
+unmistakably sad.  "Ah, the telegram!  That was wrong. 
+Lilia there was more cowardly than I was.  We should have
+told the truth.  It lost me my nerve, at all events.  I came
+to the station meaning to tell you everything then.  But we
+had started with a lie, and I got frightened.  And at the
+end, when you left, I got frightened again and came with
+you."
+
+"Did you really mean to stop?"
+
+"For a time, at all events."
+
+"Would that have suited a newly married pair?"
+
+"It would have suited them.  Lilia needed me.  And as
+for him--I can't help feeling I might have got influence over
+him."
+
+"I am ignorant of these matters," said Philip; "but I
+should have thought that would have increased the difficulty
+of the situation."
+
+The crisp remark was wasted on her.  She looked
+hopelessly at the raw over-built country, and said, "Well, I
+have explained."
+
+"But pardon me, Miss Abbott; of most of your conduct you
+have given a description rather than an explanation."
+
+He had fairly caught her, and expected that she would
+gape and collapse.  To his surprise she answered with some
+spirit, "An explanation may bore you, Mr. Herriton: it drags
+in other topics."
+
+"Oh, never mind."
+
+"I hated Sawston, you see."
+
+He was delighted.  "So did and do I. That's splendid. 
+Go on."
+
+"I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the
+respectability, the petty unselfishness."
+
+"Petty selfishness," he corrected.  Sawston psychology
+had long been his specialty.
+
+"Petty unselfishness," she repeated.  "I had got an idea
+that every one here spent their lives in making little
+sacrifices for objects they didn't care for, to please
+people they didn't love; that they never learnt to be
+sincere--and, what's as bad, never learnt how to enjoy
+themselves.  That's what I thought--what I thought at Monteriano."
+
+"Why, Miss Abbott," he cried, "you should have told me
+this before!  Think it still!  I agree with lots of it.
+Magnificent!"
+
+"Now Lilia," she went on, "though there were things
+about her I didn't like, had somehow kept the power of
+enjoying herself with sincerity.  And Gino, I thought, was
+splendid, and young, and strong not only in body, and
+sincere as the day.  If they wanted to marry, why shouldn't
+they do so?  Why shouldn't she break with the deadening life
+where she had got into a groove, and would go on in it,
+getting more and more--worse than unhappy--apathetic till she
+died?  Of course I was wrong.  She only changed one groove
+for another--a worse groove.  And as for him--well, you know
+more about him than I do.  I can never trust myself to judge
+characters again.  But I still feel he cannot have been
+quite bad when we first met him.  Lilia--that I should dare
+to say it! --must have been cowardly.  He was only a boy--just
+going to turn into something fine, I thought--and she must
+have mismanaged him.  So that is the one time I have gone
+against what is proper, and there are the results.  You have
+an explanation now."
+
+"And much of it has been most interesting, though I
+don't understand everything.  Did you never think of the
+disparity of their social position?"
+
+"We were mad--drunk with rebellion.  We had no
+common-sense.  As soon as you came, you saw and foresaw everything."
+
+"Oh, I don't think that."  He was vaguely displeased at
+being credited with common-sense.  For a moment Miss Abbott
+had seemed to him more unconventional than himself.
+
+"I hope you see," she concluded, "why I have troubled
+you with this long story.  Women--I heard you say the other
+day--are never at ease till they tell their faults out loud. 
+Lilia is dead and her husband gone to the bad--all through
+me.  You see, Mr. Herriton, it makes me specially unhappy;
+it's the only time I've ever gone into what my father calls
+'real life'--and look what I've made of it!  All that winter
+I seemed to be waking up to beauty and splendour and I don't
+know what; and when the spring came, I wanted to fight
+against the things I hated--mediocrity and dulness and
+spitefulness and society.  I actually hated society for a
+day or two at Monteriano.  I didn't see that all these
+things are invincible, and that if we go against them they
+will break us to pieces.  Thank you for listening to so much
+nonsense."
+
+"Oh, I quite sympathize with what you say," said Philip
+encouragingly; "it isn't nonsense, and a year or two ago I
+should have been saying it too.  But I feel differently now,
+and I hope that you also will change.  Society is
+invincible--to a certain degree.  But your real life is your
+own, and nothing can touch it.  There is no power on earth
+that can prevent your criticizing and despising
+mediocrity--nothing that can stop you retreating into
+splendour and beauty--into the thoughts and beliefs that make
+the real life--the real you."
+
+"I have never had that experience yet.  Surely I and my
+life must be where I live."
+
+Evidently she had the usual feminine incapacity for
+grasping philosophy.  But she had developed quite a
+personality, and he must see more of her.  "There is another
+great consolation against invincible mediocrity," he
+said--"the meeting a fellow-victim.  I hope that this is only
+the first of many discussions that we shall have together."
+
+She made a suitable reply.  The train reached Charing
+Cross, and they parted,--he to go to a matinee, she to buy
+petticoats for the corpulent poor.  Her thoughts wandered as
+she bought them: the gulf between herself and Mr. Herriton,
+which she had always known to be great, now seemed to her
+immeasurable.
+
+These events and conversations took place at
+Christmas-time.  The New Life initiated by them lasted some
+seven months.  Then a little incident--a mere little
+vexatious incident--brought it to its close.
+
+Irma collected picture post-cards, and Mrs. Herriton or
+Harriet always glanced first at all that came, lest the
+child should get hold of something vulgar.  On this occasion
+the subject seemed perfectly inoffensive--a lot of ruined
+factory chimneys--and Harriet was about to hand it to her
+niece when her eye was caught by the words on the margin. 
+She gave a shriek and flung the card into the grate.  Of
+course no fire was alight in July, and Irma only had to run
+and pick it out again.
+
+"How dare you!" screamed her aunt.  "You wicked girl! 
+Give it here!"
+
+Unfortunately Mrs. Herriton was out of the room.  Irma,
+who was not in awe of Harriet, danced round the table,
+reading as she did so, "View of the superb city of
+Monteriano--from your lital brother."
+
+Stupid Harriet caught her, boxed her ears, and tore the
+post-card into fragments.  Irma howled with pain, and began
+shouting indignantly, "Who is my little brother?  Why have I
+never heard of him before?  Grandmamma!  Grandmamma!  Who is
+my little brother?  Who is my--"
+
+Mrs. Herriton swept into the room, saying, "Come with
+me, dear, and I will tell you.  Now it is time for you to know."
+
+Irma returned from the interview sobbing, though, as a
+matter of fact, she had learnt very little.  But that little
+took hold of her imagination.  She had promised secrecy--she
+knew not why.  But what harm in talking of the little
+brother to those who had heard of him already?
+
+"Aunt Harriet!" she would say.  "Uncle Phil! 
+Grandmamma!  What do you suppose my little brother is doing
+now?  Has he begun to play?  Do Italian babies talk sooner
+than us, or would he be an English baby born abroad?  Oh, I
+do long to see him, and be the first to teach him the Ten
+Commandments and the Catechism."
+
+The last remark always made Harriet look grave.
+
+"Really," exclaimed Mrs. Herriton, "Irma is getting too
+tiresome.  She forgot poor Lilia soon enough."
+
+"A living brother is more to her than a dead mother,"
+said Philip dreamily.  "She can knit him socks."
+
+"I stopped that.  She is bringing him in everywhere.  It
+is most vexatious.  The other night she asked if she might
+include him in the people she mentions specially in her prayers."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Of course I allowed her," she replied coldly.  "She has
+a right to mention any one she chooses.  But I was annoyed
+with her this morning, and I fear that I showed it."
+
+"And what happened this morning?"
+
+"She asked if she could pray for her 'new father'--for
+the Italian!"
+
+"Did you let her?"
+
+"I got up without saying anything."
+
+"You must have felt just as you did when I wanted to
+pray for the devil."
+
+"He is the devil," cried Harriet.
+
+"No, Harriet; he is too vulgar."
+
+"I will thank you not to scoff against religion!" was
+Harriet's retort.  "Think of that poor baby.  Irma is right
+to pray for him.  What an entrance into life for an English
+child!"
+
+"My dear sister, I can reassure you.  Firstly, the
+beastly baby is Italian.  Secondly, it was promptly
+christened at Santa Deodata's, and a powerful combination of
+saints watch over--"
+
+"Don't, dear.  And, Harriet, don't be so serious--I mean
+not so serious when you are with Irma.  She will be worse
+than ever if she thinks we have something to hide."
+
+Harriet's conscience could be quite as tiresome as
+Philip's unconventionality.  Mrs. Herriton soon made it easy
+for her daughter to go for six weeks to the Tirol.  Then she
+and Philip began to grapple with Irma alone.
+
+Just as they had got things a little quiet the beastly
+baby sent another picture post-card--a comic one, not
+particularly proper.  Irma received it while they were out,
+and all the trouble began again.
+
+"I cannot think," said Mrs. Herriton, "what his motive
+is in sending them."
+
+Two years before, Philip would have said that the motive
+was to give pleasure.  Now he, like his mother, tried to
+think of something sinister and subtle.
+
+"Do you suppose that he guesses the situation--how
+anxious we are to hush the scandal up?"
+
+"That is quite possible.  He knows that Irma will worry
+us about the baby.  Perhaps he hopes that we shall adopt it
+to quiet her."
+
+"Hopeful indeed."
+
+"At the same time he has the chance of corrupting the
+child's morals."  She unlocked a drawer, took out the
+post-card, and regarded it gravely.  "He entreats her to
+send the baby one," was her next remark.
+
+"She might do it too!"
+
+"I told her not to; but we must watch her carefully,
+without, of course, appearing to be suspicious."
+
+Philip was getting to enjoy his mother's diplomacy.  He
+did not think of his own morals and behaviour any more.
+
+"Who's to watch her at school, though?  She may bubble
+out any moment."
+
+"We can but trust to our influence," said Mrs. Herriton.
+
+Irma did bubble out, that very day.  She was proof
+against a single post-card, not against two.  A new little
+brother is a valuable sentimental asset to a school-girl,
+and her school was then passing through an acute phase of
+baby-worship.  Happy the girl who had her quiver full of
+them, who kissed them when she left home in the morning, who
+had the right to extricate them from mail-carts in the
+interval, who dangled them at tea ere they retired to rest! 
+That one might sing the unwritten song of Miriam, blessed
+above all school-girls, who was allowed to hide her baby
+brother in a squashy place, where none but herself could
+find him!
+
+How could Irma keep silent when pretentious girls spoke
+of baby cousins and baby visitors--she who had a baby
+brother, who wrote her post-cards through his dear papa? 
+She had promised not to tell about him--she knew not why--and
+she told.  And one girl told another, and one girl told her
+mother, and the thing was out.
+
+"Yes, it is all very sad," Mrs. Herriton kept saying. 
+"My daughter-in-law made a very unhappy marriage, as I dare
+say you know.  I suppose that the child will be educated in
+Italy.  Possibly his grandmother may be doing something, but
+I have not heard of it.  I do not expect that she will have
+him over.  She disapproves of the father.  It is altogether
+a painful business for her."
+
+She was careful only to scold Irma for disobedience--that
+eighth deadly sin, so convenient to parents and guardians. 
+Harriet would have plunged into needless explanations and
+abuse.  The child was ashamed, and talked about the baby
+less.  The end of the school year was at hand, and she hoped
+to get another prize.  But she also had put her hand to the wheel.
+
+It was several days before they saw Miss Abbott.  Mrs.
+Herriton had not come across her much since the kiss of
+reconciliation, nor Philip since the journey to London.  She
+had, indeed, been rather a disappointment to him.  Her
+creditable display of originality had never been repeated:
+he feared she was slipping back.  Now she came about the
+Cottage Hospital--her life was devoted to dull acts of
+charity--and though she got money out of him and out of his
+mother, she still sat tight in her chair, looking graver and
+more wooden than ever.
+
+"I dare say you have heard," said Mrs. Herriton, well
+knowing what the matter was.
+
+"Yes, I have.  I came to ask you; have any steps been taken?"
+
+Philip was astonished.  The question was impertinent in
+the extreme.  He had a regard for Miss Abbott, and regretted
+that she had been guilty of it.
+
+"About the baby?" asked Mrs. Herriton pleasantly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"As far as I know, no steps.  Mrs. Theobald may have
+decided on something, but I have not heard of it."
+
+"I was meaning, had you decided on anything?"
+
+"The child is no relation of ours," said Philip.  "It is
+therefore scarcely for us to interfere."
+
+His mother glanced at him nervously.  "Poor Lilia was
+almost a daughter to me once.  I know what Miss Abbott
+means.  But now things have altered.  Any initiative would
+naturally come from Mrs. Theobald."
+
+"But does not Mrs. Theobald always take any initiative
+from you?" asked Miss Abbott.
+
+Mrs. Herriton could not help colouring.  "I sometimes
+have given her advice in the past.  I should not presume to
+do so now."
+
+"Then is nothing to be done for the child at all?"
+
+"It is extraordinarily good of you to take this
+unexpected interest," said Philip.
+
+"The child came into the world through my negligence,"
+replied Miss Abbott.  "It is natural I should take an
+interest in it."
+
+"My dear Caroline," said Mrs. Herriton, "you must not
+brood over the thing.  Let bygones be bygones.  The child
+should worry you even less than it worries us.  We never
+even mention it.  It belongs to another world."
+
+Miss Abbott got up without replying and turned to go. 
+Her extreme gravity made Mrs. Herriton uneasy.  "Of course,"
+she added, "if Mrs. Theobald decides on any plan that seems
+at all practicable--I must say I don't see any such--I shall
+ask if I may join her in it, for Irma's sake, and share in
+any possible expenses."
+
+"Please would you let me know if she decides on
+anything.  I should like to join as well."
+
+"My dear, how you throw about your money!  We would
+never allow it."
+
+"And if she decides on nothing, please also let me
+know.  Let me know in any case."
+
+Mrs. Herriton made a point of kissing her.
+
+"Is the young person mad?" burst out Philip as soon as
+she had departed.  "Never in my life have I seen such
+colossal impertinence.  She ought to be well smacked, and
+sent back to Sunday-school."
+
+His mother said nothing.
+
+"But don't you see--she is practically threatening us? 
+You can't put her off with Mrs. Theobald; she knows as well
+as we do that she is a nonentity.  If we don't do anything
+she's going to raise a scandal--that we neglect our
+relatives, &c., which is, of course, a lie.  Still she'll
+say it.  Oh, dear, sweet, sober Caroline Abbott has a screw
+loose!  We knew it at Monteriano.  I had my suspicions last
+year one day in the train; and here it is again.  The young
+person is mad."
+
+She still said nothing.
+
+"Shall I go round at once and give it her well?  I'd
+really enjoy it."
+
+In a low, serious voice--such a voice as she had not used
+to him for months--Mrs. Herriton said, "Caroline has been
+extremely impertinent.  Yet there may be something in what
+she says after all.  Ought the child to grow up in that
+place--and with that father?"
+
+Philip started and shuddered.  He saw that his mother
+was not sincere.  Her insincerity to others had amused him,
+but it was disheartening when used against himself.
+
+"Let us admit frankly," she continued, "that after all
+we may have responsibilities."
+
+"I don't understand you, Mother.  You are turning
+absolutely round.  What are you up to?"
+
+In one moment an impenetrable barrier had been erected
+between them.  They were no longer in smiling confidence. 
+Mrs. Herriton was off on tactics of her own--tactics which
+might be beyond or beneath him.
+
+His remark offended her.  "Up to?  I am wondering
+whether I ought not to adopt the child.  Is that
+sufficiently plain?"
+
+"And this is the result of half-a-dozen idiocies of Miss
+Abbott?"
+
+"It is.  I repeat, she has been extremely impertinent. 
+None the less she is showing me my duty.  If I can rescue
+poor Lilia's baby from that horrible man, who will bring it
+up either as Papist or infidel--who will certainly bring it
+up to be vicious--I shall do it."
+
+"You talk like Harriet."
+
+"And why not?" said she, flushing at what she knew to be
+an insult.  "Say, if you choose, that I talk like Irma. 
+That child has seen the thing more clearly than any of us. 
+She longs for her little brother.  She shall have him.  I
+don't care if I am impulsive."
+
+He was sure that she was not impulsive, but did not dare
+to say so.  Her ability frightened him.  All his life he had
+been her puppet.  She let him worship Italy, and reform
+Sawston--just as she had let Harriet be Low Church.  She had
+let him talk as much as he liked.  But when she wanted a
+thing she always got it.
+
+And though she was frightening him, she did not inspire
+him with reverence.  Her life, he saw, was without meaning. 
+To what purpose was her diplomacy, her insincerity, her
+continued repression of vigour?  Did they make any one
+better or happier?  Did they even bring happiness to
+herself?  Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with
+her clutches after pleasure, were after all more divine than
+this well-ordered, active, useless machine.
+
+Now that his mother had wounded his vanity he could
+criticize her thus.  But he could not rebel.  To the end of
+his days he could probably go on doing what she wanted.  He
+watched with a cold interest the duel between her and Miss
+Abbott.  Mrs. Herriton's policy only appeared gradually.  It
+was to prevent Miss Abbott interfering with the child at all
+costs, and if possible to prevent her at a small cost. 
+Pride was the only solid element in her disposition.  She
+could not bear to seem less charitable than others.
+
+"I am planning what can be done," she would tell people,
+"and that kind Caroline Abbott is helping me.  It is no
+business of either of us, but we are getting to feel that
+the baby must not be left entirely to that horrible man.  It
+would be unfair to little Irma; after all, he is her
+half-brother.  No, we have come to nothing definite."
+
+Miss Abbott was equally civil, but not to be appeased by
+good intentions.  The child's welfare was a sacred duty to
+her, not a matter of pride or even of sentiment.  By it
+alone, she felt, could she undo a little of the evil that
+she had permitted to come into the world.  To her
+imagination Monteriano had become a magic city of vice,
+beneath whose towers no person could grow up happy or pure. 
+Sawston, with its semi-detached houses and snobby schools,
+its book teas and bazaars, was certainly petty and dull; at
+times she found it even contemptible.  But it was not a
+place of sin, and at Sawston, either with the Herritons or
+with herself, the baby should grow up.
+
+As soon as it was inevitable, Mrs. Herriton wrote a
+letter for Waters and Adamson to send to Gino--the oddest
+letter; Philip saw a copy of it afterwards.  Its ostensible
+purpose was to complain of the picture postcards.  Right at
+the end, in a few nonchalant sentences, she offered to adopt
+the child, provided that Gino would undertake never to come
+near it, and would surrender some of Lilia's money for its
+education.
+
+"What do you think of it?" she asked her son.  "It would
+not do to let him know that we are anxious for it."
+
+"Certainly he will never suppose that."
+
+"But what effect will the letter have on him?"
+
+"When he gets it he will do a sum.  If it is less
+expensive in the long run to part with a little money and to
+be clear of the baby, he will part with it.  If he would
+lose, he will adopt the tone of the loving father."
+
+"Dear, you're shockingly cynical."  After a pause she
+added, "How would the sum work out?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure.  But if you wanted to ensure
+the baby being posted by return, you should have sent a
+little sum to HIM.  Oh, I'm not cynical--at least I only go
+by what I know of him.  But I am weary of the whole show. 
+Weary of Italy.  Weary, weary, weary.  Sawston's a kind,
+pitiful place, isn't it?  I will go walk in it and seek comfort."
+
+He smiled as he spoke, for the sake of not appearing
+serious.  When he had left her she began to smile also.
+
+It was to the Abbotts' that he walked.  Mr. Abbott
+offered him tea, and Caroline, who was keeping up her
+Italian in the next room, came in to pour it out.  He told
+them that his mother had written to Signor Carella, and they
+both uttered fervent wishes for her success.
+
+"Very fine of Mrs. Herriton, very fine indeed," said Mr.
+Abbott, who, like every one else, knew nothing of his
+daughter's exasperating behaviour.  "I'm afraid it will mean
+a lot of expense.  She will get nothing out of Italy without
+paying."
+
+"There are sure to be incidental expenses," said Philip
+cautiously.  Then he turned to Miss Abbott and said, "Do you
+suppose we shall have difficulty with the man?"
+
+"It depends," she replied, with equal caution.
+
+"From what you saw of him, should you conclude that he
+would make an affectionate parent?"
+
+"I don't go by what I saw of him, but by what I know of him."
+
+"Well, what do you conclude from that?"
+
+"That he is a thoroughly wicked man."
+
+"Yet thoroughly wicked men have loved their children. 
+Look at Rodrigo Borgia, for example."
+
+"I have also seen examples of that in my district."
+
+With this remark the admirable young woman rose, and
+returned to keep up her Italian.  She puzzled Philip
+extremely.  He could understand enthusiasm, but she did not
+seem the least enthusiastic.  He could understand pure
+cussedness, but it did not seem to be that either. 
+Apparently she was deriving neither amusement nor profit
+from the struggle.  Why, then, had she undertaken it? 
+Perhaps she was not sincere.  Perhaps, on the whole, that
+was most likely.  She must be professing one thing and
+aiming at another.  What the other thing could be he did not
+stop to consider.  Insincerity was becoming his stock
+explanation for anything unfamiliar, whether that thing was
+a kindly action or a high ideal.
+
+"She fences well," he said to his mother afterwards.
+
+"What had you to fence about?" she said suavely.  Her
+son might know her tactics, but she refused to admit that he
+knew.  She still pretended to him that the baby was the one
+thing she wanted, and had always wanted, and that Miss
+Abbott was her valued ally.
+
+And when, next week, the reply came from Italy, she
+showed him no face of triumph.  "Read the letters," she
+said.  "We have failed."
+
+Gino wrote in his own language, but the solicitors had
+sent a laborious English translation, where "Preghiatissima
+Signora" was rendered as "Most Praiseworthy Madam," and
+every delicate compliment and superlative--superlatives are
+delicate in Italian--would have felled an ox. For a moment
+Philip forgot the matter in the manner; this grotesque
+memorial of the land he had loved moved him almost to
+tears.  He knew the originals of these lumbering phrases; he
+also had sent "sincere auguries"; he also had addressed
+letters--who writes at home? --from the Caffe Garibaldi.  "I
+didn't know I was still such an ass," he thought.  "Why
+can't I realize that it's merely tricks of expression?  A
+bounder's a bounder, whether he lives in Sawston or Monteriano."
+
+"Isn't it disheartening?" said his mother.
+
+He then read that Gino could not accept the generous
+offer.  His paternal heart would not permit him to abandon
+this symbol of his deplored spouse.  As for the picture
+post-cards, it displeased him greatly that they had been
+obnoxious.  He would send no more.  Would Mrs. Herriton,
+with her notorious kindness, explain this to Irma, and thank
+her for those which Irma (courteous Miss!) had sent to him?
+
+"The sum works out against us," said Philip.  "Or
+perhaps he is putting up the price."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Herriton decidedly.  "It is not that. 
+For some perverse reason he will not part with the child.  I
+must go and tell poor Caroline.  She will be equally distressed."
+
+She returned from the visit in the most extraordinary
+condition.  Her face was red, she panted for breath, there
+were dark circles round her eyes.
+
+"The impudence!" she shouted.  "The cursed impudence! 
+Oh, I'm swearing.  I don't care.  That beastly woman--how
+dare she interfere--I'll--Philip, dear, I'm sorry.  It's no
+good.  You must go."
+
+"Go where?  Do sit down.  What's happened?"  This
+outburst of violence from his elegant ladylike mother pained
+him dreadfully.  He had not known that it was in her.
+
+"She won't accept--won't accept the letter as final.  You
+must go to Monteriano!"
+
+"I won't!" he shouted back.  "I've been and I've
+failed.  I'll never see the place again.  I hate Italy."
+
+"If you don't go, she will."
+
+"Abbott?"
+
+"Yes.  Going alone; would start this evening.  I offered
+to write; she said it was 'too late!' Too late!  The child,
+if you please--Irma's brother--to live with her, to be brought
+up by her and her father at our very gates, to go to school
+like a gentleman, she paying.  Oh, you're a man!  It doesn't
+matter for you.  You can laugh.  But I know what people say;
+and that woman goes to Italy this evening."
+
+He seemed to be inspired.  "Then let her go!  Let her
+mess with Italy by herself.  She'll come to grief somehow. 
+Italy's too dangerous, too--"
+
+"Stop that nonsense, Philip.  I will not be disgraced by
+her.  I WILL have the child.  Pay all we've got for it.  I
+will have it."
+
+"Let her go to Italy!" he cried.  "Let her meddle with
+what she doesn't understand!  Look at this letter!  The man
+who wrote it will marry her, or murder her, or do for her
+somehow.  He's a bounder, but he's not an English bounder. 
+He's mysterious and terrible.  He's got a country behind him
+that's upset people from the beginning of the world."
+
+"Harriet!" exclaimed his mother.  "Harriet shall go
+too.  Harriet, now, will be invaluable!"  And before Philip
+had stopped talking nonsense, she had planned the whole
+thing and was looking out the trains.
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+Italy, Philip had always maintained, is only her true self
+in the height of the summer, when the tourists have left
+her, and her soul awakes under the beams of a vertical sun. 
+He now had every opportunity of seeing her at her best, for
+it was nearly the middle of August before he went out to
+meet Harriet in the Tirol.
+
+He found his sister in a dense cloud five thousand feet
+above the sea, chilled to the bone, overfed, bored, and not
+at all unwilling to be fetched away.
+
+"It upsets one's plans terribly," she remarked, as she
+squeezed out her sponges, "but obviously it is my duty."
+
+"Did mother explain it all to you?" asked Philip.
+
+"Yes, indeed!  Mother has written me a really beautiful
+letter.  She describes how it was that she gradually got to
+feel that we must rescue the poor baby from its terrible
+surroundings, how she has tried by letter, and it is no
+good--nothing but insincere compliments and hypocrisy came
+back.  Then she says, 'There is nothing like personal
+influence; you and Philip will succeed where I have failed.'
+She says, too, that Caroline Abbott has been wonderful."
+
+Philip assented.
+
+"Caroline feels it as keenly almost as us.  That is
+because she knows the man.  Oh, he must be loathsome! 
+Goodness me!  I've forgotten to pack the ammonia!  . . . It
+has been a terrible lesson for Caroline, but I fancy it is
+her turning-point.  I can't help liking to think that out of
+all this evil good will come."
+
+Philip saw no prospect of good, nor of beauty either. 
+But the expedition promised to be highly comic.  He was not
+averse to it any longer; he was simply indifferent to all in
+it except the humours.  These would be wonderful.  Harriet,
+worked by her mother; Mrs. Herriton, worked by Miss Abbott;
+Gino, worked by a cheque--what better entertainment could he
+desire?  There was nothing to distract him this time; his
+sentimentality had died, so had his anxiety for the family
+honour.  He might be a puppet's puppet, but he knew exactly
+the disposition of the strings.
+
+They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the
+streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the
+vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and
+drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be
+beautiful.  And the train which had picked them at sunrise
+out of a waste of glaciers and hotels was waltzing at sunset
+round the walls of Verona.
+
+"Absurd nonsense they talk about the heat," said Philip,
+as they drove from the station.  "Supposing we were here for
+pleasure, what could be more pleasurable than this?"
+
+"Did you hear, though, they are remarking on the cold?"
+said Harriet nervously.  "I should never have thought it cold."
+
+And on the second day the heat struck them, like a hand
+laid over the mouth, just as they were walking to see the
+tomb of Juliet.  From that moment everything went wrong. 
+They fled from Verona.  Harriet's sketch-book was stolen,
+and the bottle of ammonia in her trunk burst over her
+prayer-book, so that purple patches appeared on all her
+clothes.  Then, as she was going through Mantua at four in
+the morning, Philip made her look out of the window because
+it was Virgil's birthplace, and a smut flew in her eye, and
+Harriet with a smut in her eye was notorious.  At Bologna
+they stopped twenty-four hours to rest.  It was a FESTA, and
+children blew bladder whistles night and day.  "What a
+religion!" said Harriet.  The hotel smelt, two puppies were
+asleep on her bed, and her bedroom window looked into a
+belfry, which saluted her slumbering form every quarter of
+an hour.  Philip left his walking-stick, his socks, and the
+Baedeker at Bologna; she only left her sponge-bag.  Next day
+they crossed the Apennines with a train-sick child and a hot
+lady, who told them that never, never before had she sweated
+so profusely.  "Foreigners are a filthy nation," said
+Harriet.  "I don't care if there are tunnels; open the
+windows."  He obeyed, and she got another smut in her eye. 
+Nor did Florence improve matters.  Eating, walking, even a
+cross word would bathe them both in boiling water.  Philip,
+who was slighter of build, and less conscientious, suffered
+less.  But Harriet had never been to Florence, and between
+the hours of eight and eleven she crawled like a wounded
+creature through the streets, and swooned before various
+masterpieces of art.  It was an irritable couple who took
+tickets to Monteriano.
+
+"Singles or returns?" said he.
+
+"A single for me," said Harriet peevishly; "I shall
+never get back alive."
+
+"Sweet creature!" said her brother, suddenly breaking
+down.  "How helpful you will be when we come to Signor Carella!"
+
+"Do you suppose," said Harriet, standing still among a
+whirl of porters--"do you suppose I am going to enter that
+man's house?"
+
+"Then what have you come for, pray?  For ornament?"
+
+"To see that you do your duty."
+
+"Oh, thanks!"
+
+"So mother told me.  For goodness sake get the tickets;
+here comes that hot woman again!  She has the impudence to bow."
+
+"Mother told you, did she?" said Philip wrathfully, as
+he went to struggle for tickets at a slit so narrow that
+they were handed to him edgeways.  Italy was beastly, and
+Florence station is the centre of beastly Italy.  But he had
+a strange feeling that he was to blame for it all; that a
+little influx into him of virtue would make the whole land
+not beastly but amusing.  For there was enchantment, he was
+sure of that; solid enchantment, which lay behind the
+porters and the screaming and the dust.  He could see it in
+the terrific blue sky beneath which they travelled, in the
+whitened plain which gripped life tighter than a frost, in
+the exhausted reaches of the Arno, in the ruins of brown
+castles which stood quivering upon the hills.  He could see
+it, though his head ached and his skin was twitching, though
+he was here as a puppet, and though his sister knew how he
+was here.  There was nothing pleasant in that journey to
+Monteriano station.  But nothing--not even the discomfort--was
+commonplace.
+
+"But do people live inside?" asked Harriet.  They had
+exchanged railway-carriage for the legno, and the legno had
+emerged from the withered trees, and had revealed to them
+their destination.  Philip, to be annoying, answered "No."
+
+"What do they do there?" continued Harriet, with a frown.
+
+"There is a caffe.  A prison.  A theatre.  A church. 
+Walls.  A view."
+
+"Not for me, thank you," said Harriet, after a weighty pause.
+
+"Nobody asked you, Miss, you see.  Now Lilia was asked
+by such a nice young gentleman, with curls all over his
+forehead, and teeth just as white as father makes them." 
+Then his manner changed.  "But, Harriet, do you see nothing
+wonderful or attractive in that place--nothing at all?"
+
+"Nothing at all.  It's frightful."
+
+"I know it is.  But it's old--awfully old."
+
+"Beauty is the only test," said Harriet.  "At least so
+you told me when I sketched old buildings--for the sake, I
+suppose, of making yourself unpleasant."
+
+"Oh, I'm perfectly right.  But at the same time--I don't
+know--so many things have happened here--people have lived so
+hard and so splendidly--I can't explain."
+
+"I shouldn't think you could.  It doesn't seem the best
+moment to begin your Italy mania.  I thought you were cured
+of it by now.  Instead, will you kindly tell me what you are
+going to do when you arrive.  I do beg you will not be taken
+unawares this time."
+
+"First, Harriet, I shall settle you at the Stella
+d'Italia, in the comfort that befits your sex and
+disposition.  Then I shall make myself some tea.  After tea
+I shall take a book into Santa Deodata's, and read there. 
+It is always fresh and cool."
+
+The martyred Harriet exclaimed, "I'm not clever,
+Philip.  I don't go in for it, as you know.  But I know
+what's rude.  And I know what's wrong."
+
+"Meaning--?"
+
+"You!" she shouted, bouncing on the cushions of the
+legno and startling all the fleas.  "What's the good of
+cleverness if a man's murdered a woman?"
+
+"Harriet, I am hot.  To whom do you refer?"
+
+"He.  Her.  If you don't look out he'll murder you.  I
+wish he would."
+
+"Tut tut, tutlet!  You'd find a corpse extraordinarily
+inconvenient."  Then he tried to be less aggravating.  "I
+heartily dislike the fellow, but we know he didn't murder
+her.  In that letter, though she said a lot, she never said
+he was physically cruel."
+
+"He has murdered her.  The things he did--things one
+can't even mention--"
+
+"Things which one must mention if one's to talk at all. 
+And things which one must keep in their proper place. 
+Because he was unfaithful to his wife, it doesn't follow
+that in every way he's absolutely vile."  He looked at the
+city.  It seemed to approve his remark.
+
+"It's the supreme test.  The man who is unchivalrous to
+a woman--"
+
+"Oh, stow it!  Take it to the Back Kitchen.  It's no
+more a supreme test than anything else.  The Italians never
+were chivalrous from the first.  If you condemn him for
+that, you'll condemn the whole lot."
+
+"I condemn the whole lot."
+
+"And the French as well?"
+
+"And the French as well."
+
+"Things aren't so jolly easy," said Philip, more to
+himself than to her.
+
+But for Harriet things were easy, though not jolly, and
+she turned upon her brother yet again.  "What about the
+baby, pray?  You've said a lot of smart things and whittled
+away morality and religion and I don't know what; but what
+about the baby?  You think me a fool, but I've been noticing
+you all today, and you haven't mentioned the baby once.  You
+haven't thought about it, even.  You don't care.  Philip!  I
+shall not speak to you.  You are intolerable."
+
+She kept her promise, and never opened her lips all the
+rest of the way.  But her eyes glowed with anger and
+resolution.  For she was a straight, brave woman, as well as
+a peevish one.
+
+Philip acknowledged her reproof to be true.  He did not
+care about the baby one straw.  Nevertheless, he meant to do
+his duty, and he was fairly confident of success.  If Gino
+would have sold his wife for a thousand lire, for how much
+less would he not sell his child?  It was just a commercial
+transaction.  Why should it interfere with other things? 
+His eyes were fixed on the towers again, just as they had
+been fixed when he drove with Miss Abbott.  But this time
+his thoughts were pleasanter, for he had no such grave
+business on his mind.  It was in the spirit of the
+cultivated tourist that he approached his destination.
+
+One of the towers, rough as any other, was topped by a
+cross--the tower of the Collegiate Church of Santa Deodata. 
+She was a holy maiden of the Dark Ages, the city's patron
+saint, and sweetness and barbarity mingle strangely in her
+story.  So holy was she that all her life she lay upon her
+back in the house of her mother, refusing to eat, refusing
+to play, refusing to work.  The devil, envious of such
+sanctity, tempted her in various ways.  He dangled grapes
+above her, he showed her fascinating toys, he pushed soft
+pillows beneath her aching head.  When all proved vain he
+tripped up the mother and flung her downstairs before her
+very eyes.  But so holy was the saint that she never picked
+her mother up, but lay upon her back through all, and thus
+assured her throne in Paradise.  She was only fifteen when
+she died, which shows how much is within the reach of any
+school-girl.  Those who think her life was unpractical need
+only think of the victories upon Poggibonsi, San Gemignano,
+Volterra, Siena itself--all gained through the invocation of
+her name; they need only look at the church which rose over
+her grave.  The grand schemes for a marble facade were never
+carried out, and it is brown unfinished stone until this
+day.  But for the inside Giotto was summoned to decorate the
+walls of the nave.  Giotto came--that is to say, he did not
+come, German research having decisively proved--but at all
+events the nave is covered with frescoes, and so are two
+chapels in the left transept, and the arch into the choir,
+and there are scraps in the choir itself.  There the
+decoration stopped, till in the full spring of the
+Renaissance a great painter came to pay a few weeks' visit
+to his friend the Lord of Monteriano.  In the intervals
+between the banquets and the discussions on Latin etymology
+and the dancing, he would stroll over to the church, and
+there in the fifth chapel to the right he has painted two
+frescoes of the death and burial of Santa Deodata.  That is
+why Baedeker gives the place a star.
+
+Santa Deodata was better company than Harriet, and she
+kept Philip in a pleasant dream until the legno drew up at
+the hotel.  Every one there was asleep, for it was still the
+hour when only idiots were moving.  There were not even any
+beggars about.  The cabman put their bags down in the
+passage--they had left heavy luggage at the station--and
+strolled about till he came on the landlady's room and woke
+her, and sent her to them.
+
+Then Harriet pronounced the monosyllable "Go!"
+
+"Go where?" asked Philip, bowing to the landlady, who
+was swimming down the stairs.
+
+"To the Italian.  Go."
+
+"Buona sera, signora padrona.  Si ritorna volontieri a
+Monteriano!"  (Don't be a goose.  I'm not going now.  You're
+in the way, too.) "Vorrei due camere--"
+
+"Go.  This instant.  Now.  I'll stand it no longer.  Go!"
+
+"I'm damned if I'll go.  I want my tea."
+
+"Swear if you like!" she cried.  "Blaspheme!  Abuse me! 
+But understand, I'm in earnest."
+
+"Harriet, don't act.  Or act better."
+
+"We've come here to get the baby back, and for nothing
+else.  I'll not have this levity and slackness, and talk
+about pictures and churches.  Think of mother; did she send
+you out for THEM?"
+
+"Think of mother and don't straddle across the stairs. 
+Let the cabman and the landlady come down, and let me go up
+and choose rooms."
+
+"I shan't."
+
+"Harriet, are you mad?"
+
+"If you like.  But you will not come up till you have
+seen the Italian."
+
+"La signorina si sente male," said Philip, "C' e il sole."
+
+"Poveretta!" cried the landlady and the cabman.
+
+"Leave me alone!" said Harriet, snarling round at them. 
+"I don't care for the lot of you.  I'm English, and neither
+you'll come down nor he up till he goes for the baby."
+
+"La prego-piano-piano-c e un' altra signorina che dorme--"
+
+"We shall probably be arrested for brawling, Harriet. 
+Have you the very slightest sense of the ludicrous?"
+
+Harriet had not; that was why she could be so powerful. 
+She had concocted this scene in the carriage, and nothing
+should baulk her of it. To the abuse in front and the
+coaxing behind she was equally indifferent.  How long she
+would have stood like a glorified Horatius, keeping the
+staircase at both ends, was never to be known.  For the
+young lady, whose sleep they were disturbing, awoke and
+opened her bedroom door, and came out on to the landing. 
+She was Miss Abbott.
+
+Philip's first coherent feeling was one of indignation. 
+To be run by his mother and hectored by his sister was as
+much as he could stand.  The intervention of a third female
+drove him suddenly beyond politeness.  He was about to say
+exactly what he thought about the thing from beginning to
+end.  But before he could do so Harriet also had seen Miss
+Abbott.  She uttered a shrill cry of joy.
+
+"You, Caroline, here of all people!"  And in spite of
+the heat she darted up the stairs and imprinted an
+affectionate kiss upon her friend.
+
+Philip had an inspiration.  "You will have a lot to tell
+Miss Abbott, Harriet, and she may have as much to tell you. 
+So I'll pay my call on Signor Carella, as you suggested, and
+see how things stand."
+
+Miss Abbott uttered some noise of greeting or alarm.  He
+did not reply to it or approach nearer to her.  Without even
+paying the cabman, he escaped into the street.
+
+"Tear each other's eyes out!" he cried, gesticulating at
+the facade of the hotel.  "Give it to her, Harriet!  Teach
+her to leave us alone.  Give it to her, Caroline!  Teach her
+to be grateful to you.  Go it, ladies; go it!"
+
+Such people as observed him were interested, but did not
+conclude that he was mad.  This aftermath of conversation is
+not unknown in Italy.
+
+He tried to think how amusing it was; but it would not
+do--Miss Abbott's presence affected him too personally. 
+Either she suspected him of dishonesty, or else she was
+being dishonest herself.  He preferred to suppose the
+latter.  Perhaps she had seen Gino, and they had prepared
+some elaborate mortification for the Herritons.  Perhaps
+Gino had sold the baby cheap to her for a joke: it was just
+the kind of joke that would appeal to him.  Philip still
+remembered the laughter that had greeted his fruitless
+journey, and the uncouth push that had toppled him on to the
+bed.  And whatever it might mean, Miss Abbott's presence
+spoilt the comedy: she would do nothing funny.
+
+During this short meditation he had walked through the
+city, and was out on the other side.  "Where does Signor
+Carella live?" he asked the men at the Dogana.
+
+"I'll show you," said a little girl, springing out of
+the ground as Italian children will.
+
+"She will show you," said the Dogana men, nodding
+reassuringly.  "Follow her always, always, and you will come
+to no harm.  She is a trustworthy guide.  She is my
+    daughter."
+    cousin."
+    sister."
+
+Philip knew these relatives well: they ramify, if need
+be, all over the peninsula.
+
+"Do you chance to know whether Signor Carella is in?" he
+asked her.
+
+She had just seen him go in.  Philip nodded.  He was
+looking forward to the interview this time: it would be an
+intellectual duet with a man of no great intellect.  What
+was Miss Abbott up to?  That was one of the things he was
+going to discover.  While she had it out with Harriet, he
+would have it out with Gino.  He followed the Dogana's
+relative softly, like a diplomatist.
+
+He did not follow her long, for this was the Volterra
+gate, and the house was exactly opposite to it.  In half a
+minute they had scrambled down the mule-track and reached
+the only practicable entrance.  Philip laughed, partly at
+the thought of Lilia in such a building, partly in the
+confidence of victory.  Meanwhile the Dogana's relative
+lifted up her voice and gave a shout.
+
+For an impressive interval there was no reply.  Then the
+figure of a woman appeared high up on the loggia.
+
+"That is Perfetta," said the girl.
+
+"I want to see Signor Carella," cried Philip.
+
+"Out!"
+
+"Out," echoed the girl complacently.
+
+"Why on earth did you say he was in?"  He could have
+strangled her for temper.  He had been just ripe for an
+interview--just the right combination of indignation and
+acuteness: blood hot, brain cool.  But nothing ever did go
+right in Monteriano.  "When will he be back?" he called to
+Perfetta.  It really was too bad.
+
+She did not know.  He was away on business.  He might be
+back this evening, he might not.  He had gone to Poggibonsi.
+
+At the sound of this word the little girl put her
+fingers to her nose and swept them at the plain.  She sang
+as she did so, even as her foremothers had sung seven
+hundred years back--
+
+  Poggibonizzi, fatti in la,
+  Che Monteriano si fa citta!
+
+Then she asked Philip for a halfpenny.  A German lady,
+friendly to the Past, had given her one that very spring.
+
+"I shall have to leave a message," he called.
+
+"Now Perfetta has gone for her basket," said the little
+girl.  "When she returns she will lower it--so.  Then you
+will put your card into it.  Then she will raise it--thus. 
+By this means--"
+
+When Perfetta returned, Philip remembered to ask after
+the baby.  It took longer to find than the basket, and he
+stood perspiring in the evening sun, trying to avoid the
+smell of the drains and to prevent the little girl from
+singing against Poggibonsi.  The olive-trees beside him were
+draped with the weekly--or more probably the monthly--wash. 
+What a frightful spotty blouse!  He could not think where he
+had seen it. Then he remembered that it was Lilia's.  She
+had brought it "to hack about in" at Sawston, and had taken
+it to Italy because "in Italy anything does."  He had
+rebuked her for the sentiment.
+
+"Beautiful as an angel!" bellowed Perfetta, holding out
+something which must be Lilia's baby.  "But who am I addressing?"
+
+"Thank you--here is my card."  He had written on it a
+civil request to Gino for an interview next morning.  But
+before he placed it in the basket and revealed his identity,
+he wished to find something out.  "Has a young lady happened
+to call here lately--a young English lady?"
+
+Perfetta begged his pardon: she was a little deaf.
+
+"A young lady--pale, large, tall."
+
+She did not quite catch.
+
+"A YOUNG LADY!"
+
+"Perfetta is deaf when she chooses," said the Dogana's
+relative.  At last Philip admitted the peculiarity and
+strode away.  He paid off the detestable child at the
+Volterra gate.  She got two nickel pieces and was not
+pleased, partly because it was too much, partly because he
+did not look pleased when he gave it to her.  He caught her
+fathers and cousins winking at each other as he walked past
+them.  Monteriano seemed in one conspiracy to make him look
+a fool.  He felt tired and anxious and muddled, and not sure
+of anything except that his temper was lost.  In this mood
+he returned to the Stella d'Italia, and there, as he was
+ascending the stairs, Miss Abbott popped out of the
+dining-room on the first floor and beckoned to him mysteriously.
+
+"I was going to make myself some tea," he said, with his
+hand still on the banisters.
+
+"I should be grateful--"
+
+So he followed her into the dining-room and shut the door.
+
+"You see," she began, "Harriet knows nothing."
+
+"No more do I. He was out."
+
+"But what's that to do with it?"
+
+He presented her with an unpleasant smile.  She fenced
+well, as he had noticed before.  "He was out.  You find me
+as ignorant as you have left Harriet."
+
+"What do you mean?  Please, please Mr. Herriton, don't
+be mysterious: there isn't the time.  Any moment Harriet may
+be down, and we shan't have decided how to behave to her. 
+Sawston was different: we had to keep up appearances.  But
+here we must speak out, and I think I can trust you to do
+it.  Otherwise we'll never start clear."
+
+"Pray let us start clear," said Philip, pacing up and
+down the room.  "Permit me to begin by asking you a
+question.  In which capacity have you come to Monteriano--spy
+or traitor?"
+
+"Spy!" she answered, without a moment's hesitation.  She
+was standing by the little Gothic window as she spoke--the
+hotel had been a palace once--and with her finger she was
+following the curves of the moulding as if they might feel
+beautiful and strange.  "Spy," she repeated, for Philip was
+bewildered at learning her guilt so easily, and could not
+answer a word.  "Your mother has behaved dishonourably all
+through.  She never wanted the child; no harm in that; but
+she is too proud to let it come to me.  She has done all she
+could to wreck things; she did not tell you everything; she
+has told Harriet nothing at all; she has lied or acted lies
+everywhere.  I cannot trust your mother.  So I have come
+here alone--all across Europe; no one knows it; my father
+thinks I am in Normandy--to spy on Mrs. Herriton.  Don't
+let's argue!" for he had begun, almost mechanically, to
+rebuke her for impertinence.  "If you are here to get the
+child, I will help you; if you are here to fail, I shall get
+it instead of you."
+
+"It is hopeless to expect you to believe me," he
+stammered.  "But I can assert that we are here to get the
+child, even if it costs us all we've got.  My mother has
+fixed no money limit whatever.  I am here to carry out her
+instructions.  I think that you will approve of them, as you
+have practically dictated them.  I do not approve of them. 
+They are absurd."
+
+She nodded carelessly.  She did not mind what he said. 
+All she wanted was to get the baby out of Monteriano.
+
+"Harriet also carries out your instructions," he
+continued.  "She, however, approves of them, and does not
+know that they proceed from you.  I think, Miss Abbott, you
+had better take entire charge of the rescue party.  I have
+asked for an interview with Signor Carella tomorrow
+morning.  Do you acquiesce?"
+
+She nodded again.
+
+"Might I ask for details of your interview with him? 
+They might be helpful to me."
+
+He had spoken at random.  To his delight she suddenly
+collapsed.  Her hand fell from the window.  Her face was red
+with more than the reflection of evening.
+
+"My interview--how do you know of it?"
+
+"From Perfetta, if it interests you."
+
+"Who ever is Perfetta?"
+
+"The woman who must have let you in."
+
+"In where?"
+
+"Into Signor Carella's house."
+
+"Mr. Herriton!" she exclaimed.  "How could you believe
+her?  Do you suppose that I would have entered that man's
+house, knowing about him all that I do?  I think you have
+very odd ideas of what is possible for a lady.  I hear you
+wanted Harriet to go.  Very properly she refused.  Eighteen
+months ago I might have done such a thing.  But I trust I
+have learnt how to behave by now."
+
+Philip began to see that there were two Miss Abbotts--the
+Miss Abbott who could travel alone to Monteriano, and the
+Miss Abbott who could not enter Gino's house when she got
+there.  It was an amusing discovery.  Which of them would
+respond to his next move?
+
+"I suppose I misunderstood Perfetta.  Where did you have
+your interview, then?"
+
+"Not an interview--an accident--I am very sorry--I meant
+you to have the chance of seeing him first.  Though it is
+your fault.  You are a day late.  You were due here
+yesterday.  So I came yesterday, and, not finding you, went
+up to the Rocca--you know that kitchen-garden where they let
+you in, and there is a ladder up to a broken tower, where
+you can stand and see all the other towers below you and the
+plain and all the other hills?"
+
+"Yes, yes.  I know the Rocca; I told you of it."
+
+"So I went up in the evening for the sunset: I had
+nothing to do.  He was in the garden: it belongs to a friend
+of his."
+
+"And you talked."
+
+"It was very awkward for me.  But I had to talk: he
+seemed to make me. You see he thought I was here as a
+tourist; he thinks so still.  He intended to be civil, and I
+judged it better to be civil also."
+
+"And of what did you talk?"
+
+"The weather--there will be rain, he says, by tomorrow
+evening--the other towns, England, myself, about you a
+little, and he actually mentioned Lilia.  He was perfectly
+disgusting; he pretended he loved her; he offered to show me
+her grave--the grave of the woman he has murdered!"
+
+"My dear Miss Abbott, he is not a murderer.  I have just
+been driving that into Harriet.  And when you know the
+Italians as well as I do, you will realize that in all that
+he said to you he was perfectly sincere.  The Italians are
+essentially dramatic; they look on death and love as
+spectacles.  I don't doubt that he persuaded himself, for
+the moment, that he had behaved admirably, both as husband
+and widower."
+
+"You may be right," said Miss Abbott, impressed for the
+first time.  "When I tried to pave the way, so to speak--to
+hint that he had not behaved as he ought--well, it was no
+good at all.  He couldn't or wouldn't understand."
+
+There was something very humorous in the idea of Miss
+Abbott approaching Gino, on the Rocca, in the spirit of a
+district visitor.  Philip, whose temper was returning, laughed.
+
+"Harriet would say he has no sense of sin."
+
+"Harriet may be right, I am afraid."
+
+"If so, perhaps he isn't sinful!"
+
+Miss Abbott was not one to encourage levity.  "I know
+what he has done," she said.  "What he says and what he
+thinks is of very little importance."
+
+Philip smiled at her crudity.  "I should like to hear,
+though, what he said about me.  Is he preparing a warm reception?"
+
+"Oh, no, not that.  I never told him that you and
+Harriet were coming.  You could have taken him by surprise
+if you liked.  He only asked for you, and wished he hadn't
+been so rude to you eighteen months ago."
+
+"What a memory the fellow has for little things!"  He
+turned away as he spoke, for he did not want her to see his
+face.  It was suffused with pleasure.  For an apology, which
+would have been intolerable eighteen months ago, was
+gracious and agreeable now.
+
+She would not let this pass.  "You did not think it a
+little thing at the time.  You told me he had assaulted you."
+
+"I lost my temper," said Philip lightly.  His vanity had
+been appeased, and he knew it.  This tiny piece of civility
+had changed his mood.  "Did he really--what exactly did he
+say?"
+
+"He said he was sorry--pleasantly, as Italians do say
+such things.  But he never mentioned the baby once."
+
+What did the baby matter when the world was suddenly
+right way up?  Philip smiled, and was shocked at himself for
+smiling, and smiled again.  For romance had come back to
+Italy; there were no cads in her; she was beautiful,
+courteous, lovable, as of old.  And Miss Abbott--she, too,
+was beautiful in her way, for all her gaucheness and
+conventionality.  She really cared about life, and tried to
+live it properly.  And Harriet--even Harriet tried.
+
+This admirable change in Philip proceeds from nothing
+admirable, and may therefore provoke the gibes of the
+cynical.  But angels and other practical people will accept
+it reverently, and write it down as good.
+
+"The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at
+sunset," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
+
+"And he never mentioned the baby once," Miss Abbott
+repeated.  But she had returned to the window, and again her
+finger pursued the delicate curves.  He watched her in
+silence, and was more attracted to her than he had ever been
+before.  She really was the strangest mixture.
+
+"The view from the Rocca--wasn't it fine?"
+
+"What isn't fine here?" she answered gently, and then
+added, "I wish I was Harriet," throwing an extraordinary
+meaning into the words.
+
+"Because Harriet--?"
+
+She would not go further, but he believed that she had
+paid homage to the complexity of life.  For her, at all
+events, the expedition was neither easy nor jolly.  Beauty,
+evil, charm, vulgarity, mystery--she also acknowledged this
+tangle, in spite of herself.  And her voice thrilled him
+when she broke silence with "Mr. Herriton--come here--look at
+this!"
+
+She removed a pile of plates from the Gothic window, and
+they leant out of it.  Close opposite, wedged between mean
+houses, there rose up one of the great towers.  It is your
+tower: you stretch a barricade between it and the hotel, and
+the traffic is blocked in a moment.  Farther up, where the
+street empties out by the church, your connections, the
+Merli and the Capocchi, do likewise.  They command the
+Piazza, you the Siena gate.  No one can move in either but
+he shall be instantly slain, either by bows or by crossbows,
+or by Greek fire.  Beware, however, of the back bedroom
+windows.  For they are menaced by the tower of the
+Aldobrandeschi, and before now arrows have stuck quivering
+over the washstand.  Guard these windows well, lest there be
+a repetition of the events of February 1338, when the hotel
+was surprised from the rear, and your dearest friend--you
+could just make out that it was he--was thrown at you over
+the stairs.
+
+"It reaches up to heaven," said Philip, "and down to the
+other place."  The summit of the tower was radiant in the
+sun, while its base was in shadow and pasted over with
+advertisements.  "Is it to be a symbol of the town?"
+
+She gave no hint that she understood him.  But they
+remained together at the window because it was a little
+cooler and so pleasant.  Philip found a certain grace and
+lightness in his companion which he had never noticed in
+England.  She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness
+of wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm.  He
+did not suspect that he was more graceful too.  For our
+vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable,
+and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even
+for the better.
+
+Citizens came out for a little stroll before dinner. 
+Some of them stood and gazed at the advertisements on the tower.
+
+"Surely that isn't an opera-bill?" said Miss Abbott.
+
+Philip put on his pince-nez.  " 'Lucia di Lammermoor. 
+By the Master Donizetti.  Unique representation.  This evening.'
+
+"But is there an opera?  Right up here?"
+
+"Why, yes.  These people know how to live.  They would
+sooner have a thing bad than not have it at all.  That is
+why they have got to have so much that is good.  However bad
+the performance is tonight, it will be alive.  Italians
+don't love music silently, like the beastly Germans.  The
+audience takes its share--sometimes more."
+
+"Can't we go?"
+
+He turned on her, but not unkindly.  "But we're here to
+rescue a child!"
+
+He cursed himself for the remark.  All the pleasure and
+the light went out of her face, and she became again Miss
+Abbott of Sawston--good, oh, most undoubtedly good, but most
+appallingly dull.  Dull and remorseful: it is a deadly
+combination, and he strove against it in vain till he was
+interrupted by the opening of the dining-room door.
+
+They started as guiltily as if they had been flirting. 
+Their interview had taken such an unexpected course.  Anger,
+cynicism, stubborn morality--all had ended in a feeling of
+good-will towards each other and towards the city which had
+received them.  And now Harriet was here--acrid,
+indissoluble, large; the same in Italy as in
+England--changing her disposition never, and her atmosphere
+under protest.
+
+Yet even Harriet was human, and the better for a little
+tea.  She did not scold Philip for finding Gino out, as she
+might reasonably have done.  She showered civilities on Miss
+Abbott, exclaiming again and again that Caroline's visit was
+one of the most fortunate coincidences in the world. 
+Caroline did not contradict her.
+
+"You see him tomorrow at ten, Philip.  Well, don't
+forget the blank cheque.  Say an hour for the business.  No,
+Italians are so slow; say two.  Twelve o'clock.  Lunch. 
+Well--then it's no good going till the evening train.  I can
+manage the baby as far as Florence--"
+
+"My dear sister, you can't run on like that.  You don't
+buy a pair of gloves in two hours, much less a baby."
+
+"Three hours, then, or four; or make him learn English
+ways.  At Florence we get a nurse--"
+
+"But, Harriet," said Miss Abbott, "what if at first he
+was to refuse?"
+
+"I don't know the meaning of the word," said Harriet
+impressively.  "I've told the landlady that Philip and I
+only want our rooms one night, and we shall keep to it."
+
+"I dare say it will be all right.  But, as I told you, I
+thought the man I met on the Rocca a strange, difficult man."
+
+"He's insolent to ladies, we know.  But my brother can
+be trusted to bring him to his senses.  That woman, Philip,
+whom you saw will carry the baby to the hotel.  Of course
+you must tip her for it.  And try, if you can, to get poor
+Lilia's silver bangles.  They were nice quiet things, and
+will do for Irma.  And there is an inlaid box I lent
+her--lent, not gave--to keep her handkerchiefs in.  It's of no
+real value; but this is our only chance.  Don't ask for it;
+but if you see it lying about, just say--"
+
+"No, Harriet; I'll try for the baby, but for nothing
+else.  I promise to do that tomorrow, and to do it in the
+way you wish.  But tonight, as we're all tired, we want a
+change of topic.  We want relaxation.  We want to go to the
+theatre."
+
+"Theatres here?  And at such a moment?"
+
+"We should hardly enjoy it, with the great interview
+impending," said Miss Abbott, with an anxious glance at Philip.
+
+He did not betray her, but said, "Don't you think it's
+better than sitting in all the evening and getting nervous?"
+
+His sister shook her head.  "Mother wouldn't like it. 
+It would be most unsuitable--almost irreverent.  Besides all
+that, foreign theatres are notorious.  Don't you remember
+those letters in the 'Church Family Newspaper'?"
+
+"But this is an opera--'Lucia di Lammermoor'--Sir Walter
+Scott--classical, you know."
+
+Harriet's face grew resigned.  "Certainly one has so few
+opportunities of hearing music.  It is sure to be very bad. 
+But it might be better than sitting idle all the evening. 
+We have no book, and I lost my crochet at Florence."
+
+"Good.  Miss Abbott, you are coming too?"
+
+"It is very kind of you, Mr. Herriton.  In some ways I
+should enjoy it; but--excuse the suggestion--I don't think we
+ought to go to cheap seats."
+
+"Good gracious me!" cried Harriet, "I should never have
+thought of that.  As likely as not, we should have tried to
+save money and sat among the most awful people.  One keeps
+on forgetting this is Italy."
+
+"Unfortunately I have no evening dress; and if the seats--"
+
+"Oh, that'll be all right," said Philip, smiling at his
+timorous, scrupulous women-kind.  "We'll go as we are, and
+buy the best we can get.  Monteriano is not formal."
+
+So this strenuous day of resolutions, plans, alarms,
+battles, victories, defeats, truces, ended at the opera. 
+Miss Abbott and Harriet were both a little shame-faced. 
+They thought of their friends at Sawston, who were supposing
+them to be now tilting against the powers of evil.  What
+would Mrs. Herriton, or Irma, or the curates at the Back
+Kitchen say if they could see the rescue party at a place of
+amusement on the very first day of its mission?  Philip,
+too, marvelled at his wish to go.  He began to see that he
+was enjoying his time in Monteriano, in spite of the
+tiresomeness of his companions and the occasional
+contrariness of himself.
+
+He had been to this theatre many years before, on the
+occasion of a performance of "La Zia di Carlo."  Since then
+it had been thoroughly done up, in the tints of the
+beet-root and the tomato, and was in many other ways a
+credit to the little town.  The orchestra had been enlarged,
+some of the boxes had terra-cotta draperies, and over each
+box was now suspended an enormous tablet, neatly framed,
+bearing upon it the number of that box.  There was also a
+drop-scene, representing a pink and purple landscape,
+wherein sported many a lady lightly clad, and two more
+ladies lay along the top of the proscenium to steady a large
+and pallid clock.  So rich and so appalling was the effect,
+that Philip could scarcely suppress a cry.  There is
+something majestic in the bad taste of Italy; it is not the
+bad taste of a country which knows no better; it has not the
+nervous vulgarity of England, or the blinded vulgarity of
+Germany.  It observes beauty, and chooses to pass it by. 
+But it attains to beauty's confidence.  This tiny theatre of
+Monteriano spraddled and swaggered with the best of them,
+and these ladies with their clock would have nodded to the
+young men on the ceiling of the Sistine.
+
+Philip had tried for a box, but all the best were taken:
+it was rather a grand performance, and he had to be content
+with stalls.  Harriet was fretful and insular.  Miss Abbott
+was pleasant, and insisted on praising everything: her only
+regret was that she had no pretty clothes with her.
+
+"We do all right," said Philip, amused at her unwonted vanity.
+
+"Yes, I know; but pretty things pack as easily as ugly
+ones.  We had no need to come to Italy like guys."
+
+This time he did not reply, "But we're here to rescue a
+baby."  For he saw a charming picture, as charming a picture
+as he had seen for years--the hot red theatre; outside the
+theatre, towers and dark gates and mediaeval walls; beyond
+the walls olive-trees in the starlight and white winding
+roads and fireflies and untroubled dust; and here in the
+middle of it all, Miss Abbott, wishing she had not come
+looking like a guy.  She had made the right remark.  Most
+undoubtedly she had made the right remark.  This stiff
+suburban woman was unbending before the shrine.
+
+"Don't you like it at all?" he asked her.
+
+"Most awfully."  And by this bald interchange they
+convinced each other that Romance was here.
+
+Harriet, meanwhile, had been coughing ominously at the
+drop-scene, which presently rose on the grounds of
+Ravenswood, and the chorus of Scotch retainers burst into
+cry.  The audience accompanied with tappings and drummings,
+swaying in the melody like corn in the wind.  Harriet,
+though she did not care for music, knew how to listen to
+it.  She uttered an acid "Shish!"
+
+"Shut it," whispered her brother.
+
+"We must make a stand from the beginning.  They're talking."
+
+"It is tiresome," murmured Miss Abbott; "but perhaps it
+isn't for us to interfere."
+
+Harriet shook her head and shished again.  The people
+were quiet, not because it is wrong to talk during a chorus,
+but because it is natural to be civil to a visitor.  For a
+little time she kept the whole house in order, and could
+smile at her brother complacently.
+
+Her success annoyed him.  He had grasped the principle
+of opera in Italy--it aims not at illusion but at
+entertainment--and he did not want this great evening-party
+to turn into a prayer-meeting.  But soon the boxes began to
+fill, and Harriet's power was over.  Families greeted each
+other across the auditorium.  People in the pit hailed their
+brothers and sons in the chorus, and told them how well they
+were singing.  When Lucia appeared by the fountain there was
+loud applause, and cries of "Welcome to Monteriano!"
+
+"Ridiculous babies!" said Harriet, settling down in her stall.
+
+"Why, it is the famous hot lady of the Apennines," cried
+Philip; "the one who had never, never before--"
+
+"Ugh!  Don't.  She will be very vulgar.  And I'm sure
+it's even worse here than in the tunnel.  I wish we'd never--"
+
+Lucia began to sing, and there was a moment's silence. 
+She was stout and ugly; but her voice was still beautiful,
+and as she sang the theatre murmured like a hive of happy
+bees.  All through the coloratura she was accompanied by
+sighs, and its top note was drowned in a shout of universal joy.
+
+So the opera proceeded.  The singers drew inspiration
+from the audience, and the two great sextettes were rendered
+not unworthily.  Miss Abbott fell into the spirit of the
+thing.  She, too, chatted and laughed and applauded and
+encored, and rejoiced in the existence of beauty.  As for
+Philip, he forgot himself as well as his mission.  He was
+not even an enthusiastic visitor.  For he had been in this
+place always.  It was his home.
+
+Harriet, like M. Bovary on a more famous occasion, was
+trying to follow the plot.  Occasionally she nudged her
+companions, and asked them what had become of Walter Scott. 
+She looked round grimly.  The audience sounded drunk, and
+even Caroline, who never took a drop, was swaying oddly. 
+Violent waves of excitement, all arising from very little,
+went sweeping round the theatre.  The climax was reached in
+the mad scene.  Lucia, clad in white, as befitted her
+malady, suddenly gathered up her streaming hair and bowed
+her acknowledgment to the audience.  Then from the back of
+the stage--she feigned not to see it--there advanced a kind of
+bamboo clothes-horse, stuck all over with bouquets.  It was
+very ugly, and most of the flowers in it were false. Lucia
+knew this, and so did the audience; and they all knew that
+the clothes-horse was a piece of stage property, brought in
+to make the performance go year after year.  None the less
+did it unloose the great deeps.  With a scream of amazement
+and joy she embraced the animal, pulled out one or two
+practicable blossoms, pressed them to her lips, and flung
+them into her admirers.  They flung them back, with loud
+melodious cries, and a little boy in one of the stageboxes
+snatched up his sister's carnations and offered them.  "Che
+carino!" exclaimed the singer.  She darted at the little boy
+and kissed him.  Now the noise became tremendous. 
+"Silence!  silence!" shouted many old gentlemen behind. 
+"Let the divine creature continue!"  But the young men in
+the adjacent box were imploring Lucia to extend her civility
+to them.  She refused, with a humorous, expressive gesture. 
+One of them hurled a bouquet at her.  She spurned it with
+her foot.  Then, encouraged by the roars of the audience,
+she picked it up and tossed it to them.  Harriet was always
+unfortunate.  The bouquet struck her full in the chest, and
+a little billet-doux fell out of it into her lap.
+
+"Call this classical!" she cried, rising from her seat. 
+"It's not even respectable!  Philip!  take me out at once."
+
+"Whose is it?" shouted her brother, holding up the
+bouquet in one hand and the billet-doux in the other. 
+"Whose is it?"
+
+The house exploded, and one of the boxes was violently
+agitated, as if some one was being hauled to the front. 
+Harriet moved down the gangway, and compelled Miss Abbott to
+follow her.  Philip, still laughing and calling "Whose is
+it?" brought up the rear.  He was drunk with excitement. 
+The heat, the fatigue, and the enjoyment had mounted into
+his head.
+
+"To the left!" the people cried.  "The innamorato is to
+the left."
+
+He deserted his ladies and plunged towards the box.  A
+young man was flung stomach downwards across the
+balustrade.  Philip handed him up the bouquet and the note. 
+Then his own hands were seized affectionately.  It all
+seemed quite natural.
+
+"Why have you not written?" cried the young man.  "Why
+do you take me by surprise?"
+
+"Oh, I've written," said Philip hilariously.  "I left a
+note this afternoon."
+
+"Silence!  silence!" cried the audience, who were
+beginning to have enough.  "Let the divine creature
+continue."  Miss Abbott and Harriet had disappeared.
+
+"No!  no!" cried the young man.  "You don't escape me
+now."  For Philip was trying feebly to disengage his hands. 
+Amiable youths bent out of the box and invited him to enter it.
+
+"Gino's friends are ours--"
+
+"Friends?" cried Gino.  "A relative!  A brother!  Fra
+Filippo, who has come all the way from England and never written."
+
+"I left a message."
+
+The audience began to hiss.
+
+"Come in to us."
+
+"Thank you--ladies--there is not time--"
+
+The next moment he was swinging by his arms.  The moment
+after he shot over the balustrade into the box.  Then the
+conductor, seeing that the incident was over, raised his
+baton.  The house was hushed, and Lucia di Lammermoor
+resumed her song of madness and death.
+
+Philip had whispered introductions to the pleasant
+people who had pulled him in--tradesmen's sons perhaps they
+were, or medical students, or solicitors' clerks, or sons of
+other dentists.  There is no knowing who is who in Italy. 
+The guest of the evening was a private soldier.  He shared
+the honour now with Philip.  The two had to stand side by
+side in the front, and exchange compliments, whilst Gino
+presided, courteous, but delightfully familiar.  Philip
+would have a spasm of horror at the muddle he had made.  But
+the spasm would pass, and again he would be enchanted by the
+kind, cheerful voices, the laughter that was never vapid,
+and the light caress of the arm across his back.
+
+He could not get away till the play was nearly finished,
+and Edgardo was singing amongst the tombs of ancestors.  His
+new friends hoped to see him at the Garibaldi tomorrow
+evening.  He promised; then he remembered that if they kept
+to Harriet's plan he would have left Monteriano.  "At ten
+o'clock, then," he said to Gino.  "I want to speak to you
+alone.  At ten."
+
+"Certainly!" laughed the other.
+
+Miss Abbott was sitting up for him when he got back. 
+Harriet, it seemed, had gone straight to bed.
+
+"That was he, wasn't it?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, rather."
+
+"I suppose you didn't settle anything?"
+
+"Why, no; how could I?  The fact is--well, I got taken by
+surprise, but after all, what does it matter?  There's no
+earthly reason why we shouldn't do the business pleasantly. 
+He's a perfectly charming person, and so are his friends. 
+I'm his friend now--his long-lost brother.  What's the harm? 
+I tell you, Miss Abbott, it's one thing for England and
+another for Italy.  There we plan and get on high moral
+horses.  Here we find what asses we are, for things go off
+quite easily, all by themselves.  My hat, what a night!  Did
+you ever see a really purple sky and really silver stars
+before?  Well, as I was saying, it's absurd to worry; he's
+not a porky father.  He wants that baby as little as I do. 
+He's been ragging my dear mother--just as he ragged me
+eighteen months ago, and I've forgiven him.  Oh, but he has
+a sense of humour!"
+
+Miss Abbott, too, had a wonderful evening, nor did she
+ever remember such stars or such a sky.  Her head, too, was
+full of music, and that night when she opened the window her
+room was filled with warm, sweet air.  She was bathed in
+beauty within and without; she could not go to bed for
+happiness.  Had she ever been so happy before?  Yes, once
+before, and here, a night in March, the night Gino and Lilia
+had told her of their love--the night whose evil she had come
+now to undo.
+
+She gave a sudden cry of shame.  "This time--the same
+place--the same thing"--and she began to beat down her
+happiness, knowing it to be sinful.  She was here to fight
+against this place, to rescue a little soul--who was innocent
+as yet.  She was here to champion morality and purity, and
+the holy life of an English home.  In the spring she had
+sinned through ignorance; she was not ignorant now.  "Help
+me!" she cried, and shut the window as if there was magic in
+the encircling air.  But the tunes would not go out of her
+head, and all night long she was troubled by torrents of
+music, and by applause and laughter, and angry young men who
+shouted the distich out of Baedeker:--
+
+  Poggibonizzi fatti in la,
+  Che Monteriano si fa citta!
+
+Poggibonsi was revealed to her as they sang--a joyless,
+straggling place, full of people who pretended.  When she
+woke up she knew that it had been Sawston.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+At about nine o'clock next morning Perfetta went out on to
+the loggia, not to look at the view, but to throw some dirty
+water at it.  "Scusi tanto!" she wailed, for the water
+spattered a tall young lady who had for some time been
+tapping at the lower door.
+
+"Is Signor Carella in?" the young lady asked.  It was no
+business of Perfetta's to be shocked, and the style of the
+visitor seemed to demand the reception-room.  Accordingly
+she opened its shutters, dusted a round patch on one of the
+horsehair chairs, and bade the lady do herself the
+inconvenience of sitting down.  Then she ran into Monteriano
+and shouted up and down its streets until such time as her
+young master should hear her.
+
+The reception-room was sacred to the dead wife.  Her
+shiny portrait hung upon the wall--similar, doubtless, in all
+respects to the one which would be pasted on her tombstone. 
+A little piece of black drapery had been tacked above the
+frame to lend a dignity to woe.  But two of the tacks had
+fallen out, and the effect was now rakish, as of a
+drunkard's bonnet.  A coon song lay open on the piano, and
+of the two tables one supported Baedeker's "Central Italy,"
+the other Harriet's inlaid box.  And over everything there
+lay a deposit of heavy white dust, which was only blown off
+one moment to thicken on another.  It is well to be
+remembered with love.  It is not so very dreadful to be
+forgotten entirely.  But if we shall resent anything on
+earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted
+room.
+
+Miss Abbott did not sit down, partly because the
+antimacassars might harbour fleas, partly because she had
+suddenly felt faint, and was glad to cling on to the funnel
+of the stove.  She struggled with herself, for she had need
+to be very calm; only if she was very calm might her
+behaviour be justified.  She had broken faith with Philip
+and Harriet: she was going to try for the baby before they
+did.  If she failed she could scarcely look them in the face
+again.
+
+"Harriet and her brother," she reasoned, "don't realize
+what is before them.  She would bluster and be rude; he
+would be pleasant and take it as a joke.  Both of them--even
+if they offered money--would fail.  But I begin to understand
+the man's nature; he does not love the child, but he will be
+touchy about it--and that is quite as bad for us.  He's
+charming, but he's no fool; he conquered me last year; he
+conquered Mr. Herriton yesterday, and if I am not careful he
+will conquer us all today, and the baby will grow up in
+Monteriano.  He is terribly strong; Lilia found that out,
+but only I remember it now."
+
+This attempt, and this justification of it, were the
+results of the long and restless night.  Miss Abbott had
+come to believe that she alone could do battle with Gino,
+because she alone understood him; and she had put this, as
+nicely as she could, in a note which she had left for
+Philip.  It distressed her to write such a note, partly
+because her education inclined her to reverence the male,
+partly because she had got to like Philip a good deal after
+their last strange interview.  His pettiness would be
+dispersed, and as for his "unconventionality," which was so
+much gossiped about at Sawston, she began to see that it did
+not differ greatly from certain familiar notions of her
+own.  If only he would forgive her for what she was doing
+now, there might perhaps be before them a long and
+profitable friendship.  But she must succeed.  No one would
+forgive her if she did not succeed.  She prepared to do
+battle with the powers of evil.
+
+The voice of her adversary was heard at last, singing
+fearlessly from his expanded lungs, like a professional. 
+Herein he differed from Englishmen, who always have a little
+feeling against music, and sing only from the throat,
+apologetically.  He padded upstairs, and looked in at the
+open door of the reception-room without seeing her.  Her
+heart leapt and her throat was dry when he turned away and
+passed, still singing, into the room opposite.  It is
+alarming not to be seen.
+
+He had left the door of this room open, and she could
+see into it, right across the landing.  It was in a shocking
+mess.  Food, bedclothes, patent-leather boots, dirty plates,
+and knives lay strewn over a large table and on the floor. 
+But it was the mess that comes of life, not of desolation. 
+It was preferable to the charnel-chamber in which she was
+standing now, and the light in it was soft and large, as
+from some gracious, noble opening.
+
+He stopped singing, and cried "Where is Perfetta?"
+
+His back was turned, and he was lighting a cigar.  He
+was not speaking to Miss Abbott.  He could not even be
+expecting her.  The vista of the landing and the two open
+doors made him both remote and significant, like an actor on
+the stage, intimate and unapproachable at the same time. 
+She could no more call out to him than if he was Hamlet.
+
+"You know!" he continued, "but you will not tell me. 
+Exactly like you."  He reclined on the table and blew a fat
+smoke-ring.  "And why won't you tell me the numbers?  I have
+dreamt of a red hen--that is two hundred and five, and a
+friend unexpected--he means eighty-two.  But I try for the
+Terno this week.  So tell me another number."
+
+Miss Abbott did not know of the Tombola.  His speech
+terrified her.  She felt those subtle restrictions which
+come upon us in fatigue.  Had she slept well she would have
+greeted him as soon as she saw him.  Now it was impossible. 
+He had got into another world.
+
+She watched his smoke-ring.  The air had carried it
+slowly away from him, and brought it out intact upon the landing.
+
+"Two hundred and five--eighty-two.  In any case I shall
+put them on Bari, not on Florence.  I cannot tell you why; I
+have a feeling this week for Bari."  Again she tried to
+speak.  But the ring mesmerized her.  It had become vast and
+elliptical, and floated in at the reception-room door.
+
+"Ah!  you don't care if you get the profits.  You won't
+even say 'Thank you, Gino.' Say it, or I'll drop hot,
+red-hot ashes on you.  'Thank you, Gino--'"
+
+The ring had extended its pale blue coils towards her. 
+She lost self-control.  It enveloped her.  As if it was a
+breath from the pit, she screamed.
+
+There he was, wanting to know what had frightened her,
+how she had got here, why she had never spoken.  He made her
+sit down.  He brought her wine, which she refused.  She had
+not one word to say to him.
+
+"What is it?" he repeated.  "What has frightened you?"
+
+He, too, was frightened, and perspiration came starting
+through the tan.  For it is a serious thing to have been
+watched.  We all radiate something curiously intimate when
+we believe ourselves to be alone.
+
+"Business--" she said at last.
+
+"Business with me?"
+
+"Most important business."  She was lying, white and
+limp, in the dusty chair.
+
+"Before business you must get well; this is the best wine."
+
+She refused it feebly.  He poured out a glass.  She
+drank it.  As she did so she became self-conscious.  However
+important the business, it was not proper of her to have
+called on him, or to accept his hospitality.
+
+"Perhaps you are engaged," she said.  "And as I am not
+very well--"
+
+"You are not well enough to go back.  And I am not engaged."
+
+She looked nervously at the other room.
+
+"Ah, now I understand," he exclaimed.  "Now I see what
+frightened you.  But why did you never speak?"  And taking
+her into the room where he lived, he pointed to--the baby.
+
+She had thought so much about this baby, of its welfare,
+its soul, its morals, its probable defects.  But, like most
+unmarried people, she had only thought of it as a word--just
+as the healthy man only thinks of the word death, not of
+death itself.  The real thing, lying asleep on a dirty rug,
+disconcerted her.  It did not stand for a principle any
+longer.  It was so much flesh and blood, so many inches and
+ounces of life--a glorious, unquestionable fact, which a man
+and another woman had given to the world.  You could talk to
+it; in time it would answer you; in time it would not answer
+you unless it chose, but would secrete, within the compass
+of its body, thoughts and wonderful passions of its own. 
+And this was the machine on which she and Mrs. Herriton and
+Philip and Harriet had for the last month been exercising
+their various ideals--had determined that in time it should
+move this way or that way, should accomplish this and not
+that.  It was to be Low Church, it was to be
+high-principled, it was to be tactful, gentlemanly,
+artistic--excellent things all.  Yet now that she saw this
+baby, lying asleep on a dirty rug, she had a great
+disposition not to dictate one of them, and to exert no more
+influence than there may be in a kiss or in the vaguest of
+the heartfelt prayers.
+
+But she had practised self-discipline, and her thoughts
+and actions were not yet to correspond.  To recover her
+self-esteem she tried to imagine that she was in her
+district, and to behave accordingly.
+
+"What a fine child, Signor Carella.  And how nice of you
+to talk to it. Though I see that the ungrateful little
+fellow is asleep!  Seven months?  No, eight; of course
+eight.  Still, he is a remarkably fine child for his age."
+
+Italian is a bad medium for condescension.  The
+patronizing words came out gracious and sincere, and he
+smiled with pleasure.
+
+"You must not stand.  Let us sit on the loggia, where it
+is cool.  I am afraid the room is very untidy," he added,
+with the air of a hostess who apologizes for a stray thread
+on the drawing-room carpet.  Miss Abbott picked her way to
+the chair.  He sat near her, astride the parapet, with one
+foot in the loggia and the other dangling into the view. 
+His face was in profile, and its beautiful contours drove
+artfully against the misty green of the opposing hills. 
+"Posing!" said Miss Abbott to herself.  "A born artist's model."
+
+"Mr. Herriton called yesterday," she began, "but you
+were out."
+
+He started an elaborate and graceful explanation.  He
+had gone for the day to Poggibonsi.  Why had the Herritons
+not written to him, so that he could have received them
+properly?  Poggibonsi would have done any day; not but what
+his business there was fairly important.  What did she
+suppose that it was?
+
+Naturally she was not greatly interested.  She had not
+come from Sawston to guess why he had been to Poggibonsi. 
+She answered politely that she had no idea, and returned to
+her mission.
+
+"But guess!" he persisted, clapping the balustrade
+between his hands.
+
+She suggested, with gentle sarcasm, that perhaps he had
+gone to Poggibonsi to find something to do.
+
+He intimated that it was not as important as all that. 
+Something to do--an almost hopeless quest!  "E manca
+questo!"  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, to
+indicate that he had no money.  Then he sighed, and blew
+another smoke-ring.  Miss Abbott took heart and turned
+diplomatic.
+
+"This house," she said, "is a large house."
+
+"Exactly," was his gloomy reply.  "And when my poor wife
+died--"  He got up, went in, and walked across the landing to
+the reception-room door, which he closed reverently.  Then
+he shut the door of the living-room with his foot, returned
+briskly to his seat, and continued his sentence.  "When my
+poor wife died I thought of having my relatives to live
+here.  My father wished to give up his practice at Empoli;
+my mother and sisters and two aunts were also willing.  But
+it was impossible.  They have their ways of doing things,
+and when I was younger I was content with them.  But now I
+am a man.  I have my own ways.  Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Miss Abbott, thinking of her own dear
+father, whose tricks and habits, after twenty-five years
+spent in their company, were beginning to get on her
+nerves.  She remembered, though, that she was not here to
+sympathize with Gino--at all events, not to show that she
+sympathized.  She also reminded herself that he was not
+worthy of sympathy.  "It is a large house," she repeated.
+
+"Immense; and the taxes!  But it will be better
+when--Ah!  but you have never guessed why I went to
+Poggibonsi--why it was that I was out when he called."
+
+"I cannot guess, Signor Carella.  I am here on business."
+
+"But try."
+
+"I cannot; I hardly know you."
+
+"But we are old friends," he said, "and your approval
+will be grateful to me.  You gave it me once before.  Will
+you give it now?"
+
+"I have not come as a friend this time," she answered
+stiffly.  "I am not likely, Signor Carella, to approve of
+anything you do."
+
+"Oh, Signorina!"  He laughed, as if he found her piquant
+and amusing.  "Surely you approve of marriage?"
+
+"Where there is love," said Miss Abbott, looking at him
+hard.  His face had altered in the last year, but not for
+the worse, which was baffling.
+
+"Where there is love," said he, politely echoing the
+English view.  Then he smiled on her, expecting congratulations.
+
+"Do I understand that you are proposing to marry again?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I forbid you, then!"
+
+He looked puzzled, but took it for some foreign banter,
+and laughed.
+
+"I forbid you!" repeated Miss Abbott, and all the
+indignation of her sex and her nationality went thrilling
+through the words.
+
+"But why?"  He jumped up, frowning.  His voice was
+squeaky and petulant, like that of a child who is suddenly
+forbidden a toy.
+
+"You have ruined one woman; I forbid you to ruin
+another.  It is not a year since Lilia died.  You pretended
+to me the other day that you loved her.  It is a lie.  You
+wanted her money.  Has this woman money too?"
+
+"Why, yes!" he said irritably.  "A little."
+
+"And I suppose you will say that you love her."
+
+"I shall not say it.  It will be untrue.  Now my poor
+wife--"  He stopped, seeing that the comparison would involve
+him in difficulties.  And indeed he had often found Lilia as
+agreeable as any one else.
+
+Miss Abbott was furious at this final insult to her dead
+acquaintance.  She was glad that after all she could be so
+angry with the boy.  She glowed and throbbed; her tongue
+moved nimbly.  At the finish, if the real business of the
+day had been completed, she could have swept majestically
+from the house.  But the baby still remained, asleep on a
+dirty rug.
+
+Gino was thoughtful, and stood scratching his head.  He
+respected Miss Abbott.  He wished that she would respect
+him.  "So you do not advise me?" he said dolefully.  "But
+why should it be a failure?"
+
+Miss Abbott tried to remember that he was really a child
+still--a child with the strength and the passions of a
+disreputable man.  "How can it succeed," she said solemnly,
+"where there is no love?"
+
+"But she does love me!  I forgot to tell you that."
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"Passionately."  He laid his hand upon his own heart.
+
+"Then God help her!"
+
+He stamped impatiently.  "Whatever I say displeases you,
+Signorina.  God help you, for you are most unfair.  You say
+that I ill-treated my dear wife.  It is not so.  I have
+never ill-treated any one.  You complain that there is no
+love in this marriage.  I prove that there is, and you
+become still more angry.  What do you want?  Do you suppose
+she will not be contented?  Glad enough she is to get me,
+and she will do her duty well."
+
+"Her duty!" cried Miss Abbott, with all the bitterness
+of which she was capable.
+
+"Why, of course.  She knows why I am marrying her."
+
+"To succeed where Lilia failed!  To be your housekeeper,
+your slave, you--"  The words she would like to have said
+were too violent for her.
+
+"To look after the baby, certainly," said he.
+
+"The baby--?"  She had forgotten it.
+
+"It is an English marriage," he said proudly.  "I do not
+care about the money.  I am having her for my son.  Did you
+not understand that?"
+
+"No," said Miss Abbott, utterly bewildered.  Then, for a
+moment, she saw light.  "It is not necessary, Signor
+Carella.  Since you are tired of the baby--"
+
+Ever after she remembered it to her credit that she saw
+her mistake at once.  "I don't mean that," she added quickly.
+
+"I know," was his courteous response.  "Ah, in a foreign
+language (and how perfectly you speak Italian) one is
+certain to make slips."
+
+She looked at his face.  It was apparently innocent of satire.
+
+"You meant that we could not always be together yet, he
+and I.  You are right.  What is to be done?  I cannot afford
+a nurse, and Perfetta is too rough.  When he was ill I dare
+not let her touch him.  When he has to be washed, which
+happens now and then, who does it?  I. I feed him, or settle
+what he shall have.  I sleep with him and comfort him when
+he is unhappy in the night.  No one talks, no one may sing
+to him but I. Do not be unfair this time; I like to do these
+things.  But nevertheless (his voice became pathetic) they
+take up a great deal of time, and are not all suitable for a
+young man."
+
+"Not at all suitable," said Miss Abbott, and closed her
+eyes wearily.  Each moment her difficulties were
+increasing.  She wished that she was not so tired, so open
+to contradictory impressions.  She longed for Harriet's
+burly obtuseness or for the soulless diplomacy of Mrs. Herriton.
+
+"A little more wine?" asked Gino kindly.
+
+"Oh, no, thank you!  But marriage, Signor Carella, is a
+very serious step.  Could you not manage more simply?  Your
+relative, for example--"
+
+"Empoli!  I would as soon have him in England!"
+
+"England, then--"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"He has a grandmother there, you know--Mrs. Theobald."
+
+"He has a grandmother here.  No, he is troublesome, but
+I must have him with me.  I will not even have my father and
+mother too.  For they would separate us," he added.
+
+"How?"
+
+"They would separate our thoughts."
+
+She was silent.  This cruel, vicious fellow knew of
+strange refinements.  The horrible truth, that wicked people
+are capable of love, stood naked before her, and her moral
+being was abashed.  It was her duty to rescue the baby, to
+save it from contagion, and she still meant to do her duty. 
+But the comfortable sense of virtue left her.  She was in
+the presence of something greater than right or wrong.
+
+Forgetting that this was an interview, he had strolled
+back into the room, driven by the instinct she had aroused
+in him.  "Wake up!" he cried to his baby, as if it was some
+grown-up friend.  Then he lifted his foot and trod lightly
+on its stomach.
+
+Miss Abbott cried, "Oh, take care!"  She was
+unaccustomed to this method of awakening the young.
+
+"He is not much longer than my boot, is he?  Can you
+believe that in time his own boots will be as large?  And
+that he also--"
+
+"But ought you to treat him like that?"
+
+He stood with one foot resting on the little body,
+suddenly musing, filled with the desire that his son should
+be like him, and should have sons like him, to people the
+earth.  It is the strongest desire that can come to a man--if
+it comes to him at all--stronger even than love or the desire
+for personal immortality.  All men vaunt it, and declare
+that it is theirs; but the hearts of most are set
+elsewhere.  It is the exception who comprehends that
+physical and spiritual life may stream out of him for ever. 
+Miss Abbott, for all her goodness, could not comprehend it,
+though such a thing is more within the comprehension of
+women.  And when Gino pointed first to himself and then to
+his baby and said "father-son," she still took it as a piece
+of nursery prattle, and smiled mechanically.
+
+The child, the first fruits, woke up and glared at her. 
+Gino did not greet it, but continued the exposition of his policy.
+
+"This woman will do exactly what I tell her.  She is
+fond of children.  She is clean; she has a pleasant voice. 
+She is not beautiful; I cannot pretend that to you for a
+moment.  But she is what I require."
+
+The baby gave a piercing yell.
+
+"Oh, do take care!" begged Miss Abbott.  "You are
+squeezing it."
+
+"It is nothing.  If he cries silently then you may be
+frightened.  He thinks I am going to wash him, and he is
+quite right."
+
+"Wash him!" she cried.  "You?  Here?"  The homely piece
+of news seemed to shatter all her plans.  She had spent a
+long half-hour in elaborate approaches, in high moral
+attacks; she had neither frightened her enemy nor made him
+angry, nor interfered with the least detail of his domestic life.
+
+"I had gone to the Farmacia," he continued, "and was
+sitting there comfortably, when suddenly I remembered that
+Perfetta had heated water an hour ago--over there, look,
+covered with a cushion.  I came away at once, for really he
+must be washed.  You must excuse me.  I can put it off no longer."
+
+"I have wasted your time," she said feebly.
+
+He walked sternly to the loggia and drew from it a large
+earthenware bowl.  It was dirty inside; he dusted it with a
+tablecloth.  Then he fetched the hot water, which was in a
+copper pot.  He poured it out.  He added cold.  He felt in
+his pocket and brought out a piece of soap.  Then he took up
+the baby, and, holding his cigar between his teeth, began to
+unwrap it.  Miss Abbott turned to go.
+
+"But why are you going?  Excuse me if I wash him while
+we talk."
+
+"I have nothing more to say," said Miss Abbott.  All she
+could do now was to find Philip, confess her miserable
+defeat, and bid him go in her stead and prosper better.  She
+cursed her feebleness; she longed to expose it, without
+apologies or tears.
+
+"Oh, but stop a moment!" he cried.  "You have not seen
+him yet."
+
+"I have seen as much as I want, thank you."
+
+The last wrapping slid off.  He held out to her in his
+two hands a little kicking image of bronze.
+
+"Take him!"
+
+She would not touch the child.
+
+"I must go at once," she cried; for the tears--the wrong
+tears--were hurrying to her eyes.
+
+"Who would have believed his mother was blonde?  For he
+is brown all over--brown every inch of him.  Ah, but how
+beautiful he is!  And he is mine; mine for ever.  Even if he
+hates me he will be mine.  He cannot help it; he is made out
+of me; I am his father."
+
+It was too late to go.  She could not tell why, but it
+was too late.  She turned away her head when Gino lifted his
+son to his lips.  This was something too remote from the
+prettiness of the nursery.  The man was majestic; he was a
+part of Nature; in no ordinary love scene could he ever be
+so great.  For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to
+the children; and--by some sad, strange irony--it does not
+bind us children to our parents.  For if it did, if we could
+answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love,
+life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor,
+and we might be wonderfully happy.  Gino passionately
+embracing, Miss Abbott reverently averting her eyes--both of
+them had parents whom they did not love so very much.
+
+"May I help you to wash him?" she asked humbly.
+
+He gave her his son without speaking, and they knelt
+side by side, tucking up their sleeves.  The child had
+stopped crying, and his arms and legs were agitated by some
+overpowering joy.  Miss Abbott had a woman's pleasure in
+cleaning anything--more especially when the thing was human. 
+She understood little babies from long experience in a
+district, and Gino soon ceased to give her directions, and
+only gave her thanks.
+
+"It is very kind of you," he murmured, "especially in
+your beautiful dress.  He is nearly clean already.  Why, I
+take the whole morning!  There is so much more of a baby
+than one expects.  And Perfetta washes him just as she
+washes clothes.  Then he screams for hours.  My wife is to
+have a light hand.  Ah, how he kicks!  Has he splashed you? 
+I am very sorry."
+
+"I am ready for a soft towel now," said Miss Abbott, who
+was strangely exalted by the service.
+
+"Certainly!  certainly!"  He strode in a knowing way to
+a cupboard.  But he had no idea where the soft towel was. 
+Generally he dabbed the baby on the first dry thing he found.
+
+"And if you had any powder."
+
+He struck his forehead despairingly.  Apparently the
+stock of powder was just exhausted.
+
+She sacrificed her own clean handkerchief.  He put a
+chair for her on the loggia, which faced westward, and was
+still pleasant and cool.  There she sat, with twenty miles
+of view behind her, and he placed the dripping baby on her
+knee.  It shone now with health and beauty: it seemed to
+reflect light, like a copper vessel.  Just such a baby
+Bellini sets languid on his mother's lap, or Signorelli
+flings wriggling on pavements of marble, or Lorenzo di
+Credi, more reverent but less divine, lays carefully among
+flowers, with his head upon a wisp of golden straw.  For a
+time Gino contemplated them standing.  Then, to get a better
+view, he knelt by the side of the chair, with his hands
+clasped before him.
+
+So they were when Philip entered, and saw, to all
+intents and purposes, the Virgin and Child, with Donor.
+
+"Hullo!" he exclaimed; for he was glad to find things in
+such cheerful trim.
+
+She did not greet him, but rose up unsteadily and handed
+the baby to his father.
+
+"No, do stop!" whispered Philip.  "I got your note.  I'm
+not offended; you're quite right.  I really want you; I
+could never have done it alone."
+
+No words came from her, but she raised her hands to her
+mouth, like one who is in sudden agony.
+
+"Signorina, do stop a little--after all your kindness."
+
+She burst into tears.
+
+"What is it?" said Philip kindly.
+
+She tried to speak, and then went away weeping bitterly.
+
+The two men stared at each other.  By a common impulse
+they ran on to the loggia.  They were just in time to see
+Miss Abbott disappear among the trees.
+
+"What is it?" asked Philip again.  There was no answer,
+and somehow he did not want an answer.  Some strange thing
+had happened which he could not presume to understand.  He
+would find out from Miss Abbott, if ever he found out at all.
+
+"Well, your business," said Gino, after a puzzled sigh.
+
+"Our business--Miss Abbott has told you of that."
+
+"No."
+
+"But surely--"
+
+"She came for business.  But she forgot about it; so did I."
+
+Perfetta, who had a genius for missing people, now
+returned, loudly complaining of the size of Monteriano and
+the intricacies of its streets.  Gino told her to watch the
+baby.  Then he offered Philip a cigar, and they proceeded to
+the business.
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+"Mad!" screamed Harriet,--"absolutely stark, staring, raving mad!"
+
+Philip judged it better not to contradict her.
+
+"What's she here for?  Answer me that.  What's she doing
+in Monteriano in August?  Why isn't she in Normandy?  Answer
+that.  She won't.  I can: she's come to thwart us; she's
+betrayed us--got hold of mother's plans.  Oh, goodness, my head!"
+
+He was unwise enough to reply, "You mustn't accuse her
+of that.  Though she is exasperating, she hasn't come here
+to betray us."
+
+"Then why has she come here?  Answer me that."
+
+He made no answer.  But fortunately his sister was too
+much agitated to wait for one.  "Bursting in on me--crying
+and looking a disgusting sight--and says she has been to see
+the Italian.  Couldn't even talk properly; pretended she had
+changed her opinions.  What are her opinions to us?  I was
+very calm.  I said: 'Miss Abbott, I think there is a little
+misapprehension in this matter.  My mother, Mrs. Herriton--'
+Oh, goodness, my head!  Of course you've failed--don't
+trouble to answer--I know you've failed.  Where's the baby,
+pray?  Of course you haven't got it.  Dear sweet Caroline
+won't let you.  Oh, yes, and we're to go away at once and
+trouble the father no more.  Those are her commands. 
+Commands!  COMMANDS!"  And Harriet also burst into tears.
+
+Philip governed his temper.  His sister was annoying,
+but quite reasonable in her indignation.  Moreover, Miss
+Abbott had behaved even worse than she supposed.
+
+"I've not got the baby, Harriet, but at the same time I
+haven't exactly failed.  I and Signor Carella are to have
+another interview this afternoon, at the Caffe Garibaldi. 
+He is perfectly reasonable and pleasant.  Should you be
+disposed to come with me, you would find him quite willing
+to discuss things.  He is desperately in want of money, and
+has no prospect of getting any.  I discovered that.  At the
+same time, he has a certain affection for the child."  For
+Philip's insight, or perhaps his opportunities, had not been
+equal to Miss Abbott's.
+
+Harriet would only sob, and accuse her brother of
+insulting her; how could a lady speak to such a horrible
+man?  That, and nothing else, was enough to stamp Caroline. 
+Oh, poor Lilia!
+
+Philip drummed on the bedroom window-sill.  He saw no
+escape from the deadlock.  For though he spoke cheerfully
+about his second interview with Gino, he felt at the bottom
+of his heart that it would fail.  Gino was too courteous: he
+would not break off negotiations by sharp denial; he loved
+this civil, half-humorous bargaining.  And he loved fooling
+his opponent, and did it so nicely that his opponent did not
+mind being fooled.
+
+"Miss Abbott has behaved extraordinarily," he said at
+last; "but at the same time--"
+
+His sister would not hear him.  She burst forth again on
+the madness, the interference, the intolerable duplicity of
+Caroline.
+
+"Harriet, you must listen.  My dear, you must stop
+crying.  I have something quite important to say."
+
+"I shall not stop crying," said she.  But in time,
+finding that he would not speak to her, she did stop.
+
+"Remember that Miss Abbott has done us no harm.  She
+said nothing to him about the matter.  He assumes that she
+is working with us: I gathered that."
+
+"Well, she isn't."
+
+"Yes; but if you're careful she may be.  I interpret her
+behaviour thus: She went to see him, honestly intending to
+get the child away.  In the note she left me she says so,
+and I don't believe she'd lie."
+
+"I do."
+
+"When she got there, there was some pretty domestic
+scene between him and the baby, and she has got swept off in
+a gush of sentimentalism.  Before very long, if I know
+anything about psychology, there will be a reaction.  She'll
+be swept back."
+
+"I don't understand your long words.  Say plainly--"
+
+"When she's swept back, she'll be invaluable.  For she
+has made quite an impression on him.  He thinks her so nice
+with the baby.  You know, she washed it for him."
+
+"Disgusting!"
+
+Harriet's ejaculations were more aggravating than the
+rest of her.  But Philip was averse to losing his temper. 
+The access of joy that had come to him yesterday in the
+theatre promised to be permanent.  He was more anxious than
+heretofore to be charitable towards the world.
+
+"If you want to carry off the baby, keep your peace with
+Miss Abbott.  For if she chooses, she can help you better
+than I can."
+
+"There can be no peace between me and her," said Harriet
+gloomily.
+
+"Did you--"
+
+"Oh, not all I wanted.  She went away before I had
+finished speaking--just like those cowardly people! --into the
+church."
+
+"Into Santa Deodata's?"
+
+"Yes; I'm sure she needs it.  Anything more unchristian--"
+
+In time Philip went to the church also, leaving his
+sister a little calmer and a little disposed to think over
+his advice.  What had come over Miss Abbott?  He had always
+thought her both stable and sincere.  That conversation he
+had had with her last Christmas in the train to Charing
+Cross--that alone furnished him with a parallel.  For the
+second time, Monteriano must have turned her head.  He was
+not angry with her, for he was quite indifferent to the
+outcome of their expedition.  He was only extremely interested.
+
+It was now nearly midday, and the streets were
+clearing.  But the intense heat had broken, and there was a
+pleasant suggestion of rain.  The Piazza, with its three
+great attractions--the Palazzo Pubblico, the Collegiate
+Church, and the Caffe Garibaldi: the intellect, the soul,
+and the body--had never looked more charming.  For a moment
+Philip stood in its centre, much inclined to be dreamy, and
+thinking how wonderful it must feel to belong to a city,
+however mean.  He was here, however, as an emissary of
+civilization and as a student of character, and, after a
+sigh, he entered Santa Deodata's to continue his mission.
+
+There had been a FESTA two days before, and the church
+still smelt of incense and of garlic.  The little son of the
+sacristan was sweeping the nave, more for amusement than for
+cleanliness, sending great clouds of dust over the frescoes
+and the scattered worshippers.  The sacristan himself had
+propped a ladder in the centre of the Deluge--which fills one
+of the nave spandrels--and was freeing a column from its
+wealth of scarlet calico.  Much scarlet calico also lay upon
+the floor--for the church can look as fine as any theatre--and
+the sacristan's little daughter was trying to fold it up. 
+She was wearing a tinsel crown.  The crown really belonged
+to St. Augustine.  But it had been cut too big: it fell down
+over his cheeks like a collar: you never saw anything so
+absurd.  One of the canons had unhooked it just before the
+FIESTA began, and had given it to the sacristan's daughter.
+
+"Please," cried Philip, "is there an English lady here?"
+
+The man's mouth was full of tin-tacks, but he nodded
+cheerfully towards a kneeling figure.  In the midst of this
+confusion Miss Abbott was praying.
+
+He was not much surprised: a spiritual breakdown was
+quite to be expected.  For though he was growing more
+charitable towards mankind, he was still a little jaunty,
+and too apt to stake out beforehand the course that will be
+pursued by the wounded soul.  It did not surprise him,
+however, that she should greet him naturally, with none of
+the sour self-consciousness of a person who had just risen
+from her knees.  This was indeed the spirit of Santa
+Deodata's, where a prayer to God is thought none the worse
+of because it comes next to a pleasant word to a neighbour. 
+"I am sure that I need it," said she; and he, who had
+expected her to be ashamed, became confused, and knew not
+what to reply.
+
+"I've nothing to tell you," she continued.  "I have
+simply changed straight round.  If I had planned the whole
+thing out, I could not have treated you worse.  I can talk
+it over now; but please believe that I have been crying."
+
+"And please believe that I have not come to scold you,"
+said Philip.  "I know what has happened."
+
+"What?" asked Miss Abbott.  Instinctively she led the
+way to the famous chapel, the fifth chapel on the right,
+wherein Giovanni da Empoli has painted the death and burial
+of the saint.  Here they could sit out of the dust and the
+noise, and proceed with a discussion which promised to be important.
+
+"What might have happened to me--he had made you believe
+that he loved the child."
+
+"Oh, yes; he has.  He will never give it up."
+
+"At present it is still unsettled."
+
+"It will never be settled."
+
+"Perhaps not.  Well, as I said, I know what has
+happened, and I am not here to scold you.  But I must ask
+you to withdraw from the thing for the present.  Harriet is
+furious.  But she will calm down when she realizes that you
+have done us no harm, and will do none."
+
+"I can do no more," she said.  "But I tell you plainly I
+have changed sides."
+
+"If you do no more, that is all we want.  You promise
+not to prejudice our cause by speaking to Signor Carella?"
+
+"Oh, certainly.  I don't want to speak to him again; I
+shan't ever see him again."
+
+"Quite nice, wasn't he?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Well, that's all I wanted to know.  I'll go and tell
+Harriet of your promise, and I think things'll quiet down now."
+
+But he did not move, for it was an increasing pleasure
+to him to be near her, and her charm was at its strongest
+today.  He thought less of psychology and feminine
+reaction.  The gush of sentimentalism which had carried her
+away had only made her more alluring.  He was content to
+observe her beauty and to profit by the tenderness and the
+wisdom that dwelt within her.
+
+"Why aren't you angry with me?" she asked, after a pause.
+
+"Because I understand you--all sides, I think,--Harriet,
+Signor Carella, even my mother."
+
+"You do understand wonderfully.  You are the only one of
+us who has a general view of the muddle."
+
+He smiled with pleasure.  It was the first time she had
+ever praised him.  His eyes rested agreeably on Santa
+Deodata, who was dying in full sanctity, upon her back. 
+There was a window open behind her, revealing just such a
+view as he had seen that morning, and on her widowed
+mother's dresser there stood just such another copper pot. 
+The saint looked neither at the view nor at the pot, and at
+her widowed mother still less.  For lo!  she had a vision:
+the head and shoulders of St. Augustine were sliding like
+some miraculous enamel along the rough-cast wall.  It is a
+gentle saint who is content with half another saint to see
+her die.  In her death, as in her life, Santa Deodata did
+not accomplish much.
+
+"So what are you going to do?" said Miss Abbott.
+
+Philip started, not so much at the words as at the
+sudden change in the voice.  "Do?" he echoed, rather
+dismayed.  "This afternoon I have another interview."
+
+"It will come to nothing.  Well?"
+
+"Then another.  If that fails I shall wire home for
+instructions.  I dare say we may fail altogether, but we
+shall fail honourably."
+
+She had often been decided.  But now behind her decision
+there was a note of passion.  She struck him not as
+different, but as more important, and he minded it very much
+when she said--
+
+"That's not doing anything!  You would be doing
+something if you kidnapped the baby, or if you went straight
+away.  But that!  To fail honourably!  To come out of the
+thing as well as you can!  Is that all you are after?"
+
+"Why, yes," he stammered.  "Since we talk openly, that
+is all I am after just now.  What else is there?  If I can
+persuade Signor Carella to give in, so much the better.  If
+he won't, I must report the failure to my mother and then go
+home.  Why, Miss Abbott, you can't expect me to follow you
+through all these turns--"
+
+"I don't!  But I do expect you to settle what is right
+and to follow that.  Do you want the child to stop with his
+father, who loves him and will bring him up badly, or do you
+want him to come to Sawston, where no one loves him, but
+where he will be brought up well?  There is the question put
+dispassionately enough even for you.  Settle it.  Settle
+which side you'll fight on.  But don't go talking about an
+'honourable failure,' which means simply not thinking and
+not acting at all."
+
+"Because I understand the position of Signor Carella and
+of you, it's no reason that--"
+
+"None at all.  Fight as if you think us wrong.  Oh,
+what's the use of your fair-mindedness if you never decide
+for yourself?  Any one gets hold of you and makes you do
+what they want.  And you see through them and laugh at
+them--and do it.  It's not enough to see clearly; I'm
+muddle-headed and stupid, and not worth a quarter of you,
+but I have tried to do what seemed right at the time.  And
+you--your brain and your insight are splendid.  But when you
+see what's right you're too idle to do it.  You told me once
+that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our
+accomplishments.  I thought it a grand remark.  But we must
+intend to accomplish--not sit intending on a chair."
+
+"You are wonderful!" he said gravely.
+
+"Oh, you appreciate me!" she burst out again.  "I wish
+you didn't.  You appreciate us all--see good in all of us. 
+And all the time you are dead--dead--dead.  Look, why aren't
+you angry?"  She came up to him, and then her mood suddenly
+changed, and she took hold of both his hands.  "You are so
+splendid, Mr. Herriton, that I can't bear to see you
+wasted.  I can't bear--she has not been good to you--your
+mother."
+
+"Miss Abbott, don't worry over me.  Some people are born
+not to do things.  I'm one of them; I never did anything at
+school or at the Bar.  I came out to stop Lilia's marriage,
+and it was too late.  I came out intending to get the baby,
+and I shall return an 'honourable failure.' I never expect
+anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed.  You
+would be surprised to know what my great events are.  Going
+to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now--I don't suppose
+I shall ever meet anything greater.  I seem fated to pass
+through the world without colliding with it or moving it--and
+I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. 
+I don't die--I don't fall in love.  And if other people die
+or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. 
+You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle,
+which--thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you--is now more
+beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before."
+
+She said solemnly, "I wish something would happen to
+you, my dear friend; I wish something would happen to you."
+
+"But why?" he asked, smiling.  "Prove to me why I don't
+do as I am."
+
+She also smiled, very gravely.  She could not prove it. 
+No argument existed.  Their discourse, splendid as it had
+been, resulted in nothing, and their respective opinions and
+policies were exactly the same when they left the church as
+when they had entered it.
+
+Harriet was rude at lunch.  She called Miss Abbott a
+turncoat and a coward to her face.  Miss Abbott resented
+neither epithet, feeling that one was justified and the
+other not unreasonable.  She tried to avoid even the
+suspicion of satire in her replies.  But Harriet was sure
+that she was satirical because she was so calm.  She got
+more and more violent, and Philip at one time feared that
+she would come to blows.
+
+"Look here!" he cried, with something of the old manner,
+"it's too hot for this.  We've been talking and interviewing
+each other all the morning, and I have another interview
+this afternoon.  I do stipulate for silence.  Let each lady
+retire to her bedroom with a book."
+
+"I retire to pack," said Harriet.  "Please remind Signor
+Carella, Philip, that the baby is to be here by half-past
+eight this evening."
+
+"Oh, certainly, Harriet.  I shall make a point of
+reminding him."
+
+"And order a carriage to take us to the evening train."
+
+"And please," said Miss Abbott, "would you order a
+carriage for me too?"
+
+"You going?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Of course," she replied, suddenly flushing.  "Why not?"
+
+"Why, of course you would be going.  Two carriages,
+then.  Two carriages for the evening train."  He looked at
+his sister hopelessly.  "Harriet, whatever are you up to? 
+We shall never be ready."
+
+"Order my carriage for the evening train," said Harriet,
+and departed.
+
+"Well, I suppose I shall.  And I shall also have my
+interview with Signor Carella."
+
+Miss Abbott gave a little sigh.
+
+"But why should you mind?  Do you suppose that I shall
+have the slightest influence over him?"
+
+"No.  But--I can't repeat all that I said in the church. 
+You ought never to see him again.  You ought to bundle
+Harriet into a carriage, not this evening, but now, and
+drive her straight away."
+
+"Perhaps I ought.  But it isn't a very big 'ought.'
+Whatever Harriet and I do the issue is the same.  Why, I can
+see the splendour of it--even the humour.  Gino sitting up
+here on the mountain-top with his cub.  We come and ask for
+it.  He welcomes us.  We ask for it again.  He is equally
+pleasant.  I'm agreeable to spend the whole week bargaining
+with him.  But I know that at the end of it I shall descend
+empty-handed to the plains.  It might be finer of me to make
+up my mind.  But I'm not a fine character.  And nothing
+hangs on it."
+
+"Perhaps I am extreme," she said humbly.  "I've been
+trying to run you, just like your mother.  I feel you ought
+to fight it out with Harriet.  Every little trifle, for some
+reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you
+say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like
+blasphemy.  There's never any knowing--(how am I to put
+it?)--which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't
+have things hanging on it for ever."
+
+He assented, but her remark had only an aesthetic value. 
+He was not prepared to take it to his heart.  All the
+afternoon he rested--worried, but not exactly despondent. 
+The thing would jog out somehow.  Probably Miss Abbott was
+right.  The baby had better stop where it was loved.  And
+that, probably, was what the fates had decreed.  He felt
+little interest in the matter, and he was sure that he had
+no influence.
+
+It was not surprising, therefore, that the interview at
+the Caffe Garibaldi came to nothing.  Neither of them took
+it very seriously.  And before long Gino had discovered how
+things lay, and was ragging his companion hopelessly. 
+Philip tried to look offended, but in the end he had to
+laugh.  "Well, you are right," he said.  "This affair is
+being managed by the ladies."
+
+"Ah, the ladies--the ladies!" cried the other, and then
+he roared like a millionaire for two cups of black coffee,
+and insisted on treating his friend, as a sign that their
+strife was over.
+
+"Well, I have done my best," said Philip, dipping a long
+slice of sugar into his cup, and watching the brown liquid
+ascend into it.  "I shall face my mother with a good
+conscience.  Will you bear me witness that I've done my best?"
+
+"My poor fellow, I will!"  He laid a sympathetic hand on
+Philip's knee.
+
+"And that I have--"  The sugar was now impregnated with
+coffee, and he bent forward to swallow it.  As he did so his
+eyes swept the opposite of the Piazza, and he saw there,
+watching them, Harriet.  "Mia sorella!" he exclaimed.  Gino,
+much amused, laid his hand upon the little table, and beat
+the marble humorously with his fists.  Harriet turned away
+and began gloomily to inspect the Palazzo Pubblico.
+
+"Poor Harriet!" said Philip, swallowing the sugar.  "One
+more wrench and it will all be over for her; we are leaving
+this evening."
+
+Gino was sorry for this.  "Then you will not be here
+this evening as you promised us.  All three leaving?"
+
+"All three," said Philip, who had not revealed the
+secession of Miss Abbott; "by the night train; at least,
+that is my sister's plan.  So I'm afraid I shan't be here."
+
+They watched the departing figure of Harriet, and then
+entered upon the final civilities.  They shook each other
+warmly by both hands.  Philip was to come again next year,
+and to write beforehand.  He was to be introduced to Gino's
+wife, for he was told of the marriage now.  He was to be
+godfather to his next baby.  As for Gino, he would remember
+some time that Philip liked vermouth.  He begged him to give
+his love to Irma.  Mrs. Herriton--should he send her his
+sympathetic regards?  No; perhaps that would hardly do.
+
+So the two young men parted with a good deal of genuine
+affection.  For the barrier of language is sometimes a
+blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good.  Or--to
+put the thing less cynically--we may be better in new clean
+words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or
+vice.  Philip, at all events, lived more graciously in
+Italian, the very phrases of which entice one to be happy
+and kind.  It was horrible to think of the English of
+Harriet, whose every word would be as hard, as distinct, and
+as unfinished as a lump of coal.
+
+Harriet, however, talked little.  She had seen enough to
+know that her brother had failed again, and with unwonted
+dignity she accepted the situation.  She did her packing,
+she wrote up her diary, she made a brown paper cover for the
+new Baedeker.  Philip, finding her so amenable, tried to
+discuss their future plans.  But she only said that they
+would sleep in Florence, and told him to telegraph for
+rooms.  They had supper alone.  Miss Abbott did not come
+down.  The landlady told them that Signor Carella had called
+on Miss Abbott to say good-bye, but she, though in, had not
+been able to see him.  She also told them that it had begun
+to rain.  Harriet sighed, but indicated to her brother that
+he was not responsible.
+
+The carriages came round at a quarter past eight.  It
+was not raining much, but the night was extraordinarily
+dark, and one of the drivers wanted to go slowly to the
+station.  Miss Abbott came down and said that she was ready,
+and would start at once.
+
+"Yes, do," said Philip, who was standing in the hall. 
+"Now that we have quarrelled we scarcely want to travel in
+procession all the way down the hill.  Well, good-bye; it's
+all over at last; another scene in my pageant has shifted."
+
+"Good-bye; it's been a great pleasure to see you.  I
+hope that won't shift, at all events."  She gripped his hand.
+
+"You sound despondent," he said, laughing.  "Don't
+forget that you return victorious."
+
+"I suppose I do," she replied, more despondently than
+ever, and got into the carriage.  He concluded that she was
+thinking of her reception at Sawston, whither her fame would
+doubtless precede her.  Whatever would Mrs. Herriton do? 
+She could make things quite unpleasant when she thought it
+right.  She might think it right to be silent, but then
+there was Harriet.  Who would bridle Harriet's tongue? 
+Between the two of them Miss Abbott was bound to have a bad
+time.  Her reputation, both for consistency and for moral
+enthusiasm, would be lost for ever.
+
+"It's hard luck on her," he thought.  "She is a good
+person.  I must do for her anything I can."  Their intimacy
+had been very rapid, but he too hoped that it would not
+shift.  He believed that he understood her, and that she, by
+now, had seen the worst of him.  What if after a long
+time--if after all--he flushed like a boy as he looked after
+her carriage.
+
+He went into the dining-room to look for Harriet. 
+Harriet was not to be found.  Her bedroom, too, was empty. 
+All that was left of her was the purple prayer-book which
+lay open on the bed.  Philip took it up aimlessly, and
+saw--"Blessed be the Lord my God who teacheth my hands to war
+and my fingers to fight."  He put the book in his pocket,
+and began to brood over more profitable themes.
+
+Santa Deodata gave out half past eight.  All the luggage
+was on, and still Harriet had not appeared.  "Depend upon
+it," said the landlady, "she has gone to Signor Carella's to
+say good-bye to her little nephew."  Philip did not think it
+likely.  They shouted all over the house and still there was
+no Harriet.  He began to be uneasy.  He was helpless without
+Miss Abbott; her grave, kind face had cheered him
+wonderfully, even when it looked displeased.  Monteriano was
+sad without her; the rain was thickening; the scraps of
+Donizetti floated tunelessly out of the wineshops, and of
+the great tower opposite he could only see the base, fresh
+papered with the advertisements of quacks.
+
+A man came up the street with a note.  Philip read,
+"Start at once.  Pick me up outside the gate.  Pay the
+bearer.  H. H."
+
+"Did the lady give you this note?" he cried.
+
+The man was unintelligible.
+
+"Speak up!" exclaimed Philip.  "Who gave it you--and where?"
+
+Nothing but horrible sighings and bubblings came out of
+the man.
+
+"Be patient with him," said the driver, turning round on
+the box.  "It is the poor idiot."  And the landlady came out
+of the hotel and echoed "The poor idiot.  He cannot speak. 
+He takes messages for us all."
+
+Philip then saw that the messenger was a ghastly
+creature, quite bald, with trickling eyes and grey twitching
+nose.  In another country he would have been shut up; here
+he was accepted as a public institution, and part of
+Nature's scheme.
+
+"Ugh!" shuddered the Englishman.  "Signora padrona, find
+out from him; this note is from my sister.  What does it
+mean?  Where did he see her?"
+
+"It is no good," said the landlady.  "He understands
+everything but he can explain nothing."
+
+"He has visions of the saints," said the man who drove
+the cab.
+
+"But my sister--where has she gone?  How has she met him?"
+
+"She has gone for a walk," asserted the landlady.  It
+was a nasty evening, but she was beginning to understand the
+English.  "She has gone for a walk--perhaps to wish good-bye
+to her little nephew.  Preferring to come back another way,
+she has sent you this note by the poor idiot and is waiting
+for you outside the Siena gate.  Many of my guests do this."
+
+There was nothing to do but to obey the message.  He
+shook hands with the landlady, gave the messenger a nickel
+piece, and drove away.  After a dozen yards the carriage
+stopped.  The poor idiot was running and whimpering behind.
+
+"Go on," cried Philip.  "I have paid him plenty."
+
+A horrible hand pushed three soldi into his lap.  It was
+part of the idiot's malady only to receive what was just for
+his services.  This was the change out of the nickel piece.
+
+"Go on!" shouted Philip, and flung the money into the
+road.  He was frightened at the episode; the whole of life
+had become unreal.  It was a relief to be out of the Siena
+gate.  They drew up for a moment on the terrace.  But there
+was no sign of Harriet.  The driver called to the Dogana
+men.  But they had seen no English lady pass.
+
+"What am I to do?" he cried; "it is not like the lady to
+be late.  We shall miss the train."
+
+"Let us drive slowly," said the driver, "and you shall
+call her by name as we go."
+
+So they started down into the night, Philip calling
+"Harriet!  Harriet!  Harriet!"  And there she was, waiting
+for them in the wet, at the first turn of the zigzag.
+
+"Harriet, why don't you answer?"
+
+"I heard you coming," said she, and got quickly in.  Not
+till then did he see that she carried a bundle.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Hush--"
+
+"Whatever is that?"
+
+"Hush--sleeping."
+
+Harriet had succeeded where Miss Abbott and Philip had
+failed.  It was the baby.
+
+She would not let him talk.  The baby, she repeated, was
+asleep, and she put up an umbrella to shield it and her from
+the rain.  He should hear all later, so he had to conjecture
+the course of the wonderful interview--an interview between
+the South pole and the North.  It was quite easy to
+conjecture: Gino crumpling up suddenly before the intense
+conviction of Harriet; being told, perhaps, to his face that
+he was a villain; yielding his only son perhaps for money,
+perhaps for nothing.  "Poor Gino," he thought.  "He's no
+greater than I am, after all."
+
+Then he thought of Miss Abbott, whose carriage must be
+descending the darkness some mile or two below them, and his
+easy self-accusation failed.  She, too, had conviction; he
+had felt its force; he would feel it again when she knew
+this day's sombre and unexpected close.
+
+"You have been pretty secret," he said; "you might tell
+me a little now.  What do we pay for him?  All we've got?"
+
+"Hush!" answered Harriet, and dandled the bundle
+laboriously, like some bony prophetess--Judith, or Deborah,
+or Jael.  He had last seen the baby sprawling on the knees
+of Miss Abbott, shining and naked, with twenty miles of view
+behind him, and his father kneeling by his feet.  And that
+remembrance, together with Harriet, and the darkness, and
+the poor idiot, and the silent rain, filled him with sorrow
+and with the expectation of sorrow to come.
+
+Monteriano had long disappeared, and he could see
+nothing but the occasional wet stem of an olive, which their
+lamp illumined as they passed it.  They travelled quickly,
+for this driver did not care how fast he went to the
+station, and would dash down each incline and scuttle
+perilously round the curves.
+
+"Look here, Harriet," he said at last, "I feel bad; I
+want to see the baby."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"I don't mind if I do wake him up.  I want to see him. 
+I've as much right in him as you."
+
+Harriet gave in.  But it was too dark for him to see the
+child's face.  "Wait a minute," he whispered, and before she
+could stop him he had lit a match under the shelter of her
+umbrella.  "But he's awake!" he exclaimed.  The match went out.
+
+"Good ickle quiet boysey, then."
+
+Philip winced.  "His face, do you know, struck me as all
+wrong."
+
+"All wrong?"
+
+"All puckered queerly."
+
+"Of course--with the shadows--you couldn't see him."
+
+"Well, hold him up again."  She did so.  He lit another
+match.  It went out quickly, but not before he had seen that
+the baby was crying.
+
+"Nonsense," said Harriet sharply.  "We should hear him
+if he cried."
+
+"No, he's crying hard; I thought so before, and I'm
+certain now."
+
+Harriet touched the child's face.  It was bathed in
+tears.  "Oh, the night air, I suppose," she said, "or
+perhaps the wet of the rain."
+
+"I say, you haven't hurt it, or held it the wrong way,
+or anything; it is too uncanny--crying and no noise.  Why
+didn't you get Perfetta to carry it to the hotel instead of
+muddling with the messenger?  It's a marvel he understood
+about the note."
+
+"Oh, he understands."  And he could feel her shudder. 
+"He tried to carry the baby--"
+
+"But why not Gino or Perfetta?"
+
+"Philip, don't talk.  Must I say it again?  Don't talk. 
+The baby wants to sleep."  She crooned harshly as they
+descended, and now and then she wiped up the tears which
+welled inexhaustibly from the little eyes.  Philip looked
+away, winking at times himself.  It was as if they were
+travelling with the whole world's sorrow, as if all the
+mystery, all the persistency of woe were gathered to a
+single fount.  The roads were now coated with mud, and the
+carriage went more quietly but not less swiftly, sliding by
+long zigzags into the night.  He knew the landmarks pretty
+well: here was the crossroad to Poggibonsi; and the last
+view of Monteriano, if they had light, would be from here. 
+Soon they ought to come to that little wood where violets
+were so plentiful in spring.  He wished the weather had not
+changed; it was not cold, but the air was extraordinarily
+damp.  It could not be good for the child.
+
+"I suppose he breathes, and all that sort of thing?" he said.
+
+"Of course," said Harriet, in an angry whisper.  "You've
+started him again.  I'm certain he was asleep.  I do wish
+you wouldn't talk; it makes me so nervous."
+
+"I'm nervous too.  I wish he'd scream.  It's too
+uncanny.  Poor Gino!  I'm terribly sorry for Gino."
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"Because he's weak--like most of us.  He doesn't know
+what he wants.  He doesn't grip on to life.  But I like that
+man, and I'm sorry for him."
+
+Naturally enough she made no answer.
+
+"You despise him, Harriet, and you despise me.  But you
+do us no good by it.  We fools want some one to set us on
+our feet.  Suppose a really decent woman had set up Gino--I
+believe Caroline Abbott might have done it--mightn't he have
+been another man?"
+
+"Philip," she interrupted, with an attempt at
+nonchalance, "do you happen to have those matches handy?  We
+might as well look at the baby again if you have."
+
+The first match blew out immediately.  So did the
+second.  He suggested that they should stop the carriage and
+borrow the lamp from the driver.
+
+"Oh, I don't want all that bother.  Try again."
+
+They entered the little wood as he tried to strike the
+third match.  At last it caught.  Harriet poised the
+umbrella rightly, and for a full quarter minute they
+contemplated the face that trembled in the light of the
+trembling flame.  Then there was a shout and a crash.  They
+were lying in the mud in darkness.  The carriage had overturned.
+
+Philip was a good deal hurt.  He sat up and rocked
+himself to and fro, holding his arm.  He could just make out
+the outline of the carriage above him, and the outlines of
+the carriage cushions and of their luggage upon the grey
+road.  The accident had taken place in the wood, where it
+was even darker than in the open.
+
+"Are you all right?" he managed to say.  Harriet was
+screaming, the horse was kicking, the driver was cursing
+some other man.
+
+Harriet's screams became coherent.  "The baby--the
+baby--it slipped--it's gone from my arms--I stole it!"
+
+"God help me!" said Philip.  A cold circle came round
+his mouth, and, he fainted.
+
+When he recovered it was still the same confusion. The
+horse was kicking, the baby had not been found, and Harriet
+still screamed like a maniac, "I stole it!  I stole it!  I
+stole it!  It slipped out of my arms!"
+
+"Keep still!" he commanded the driver.  "Let no one
+move.  We may tread on it.  Keep still."
+
+For a moment they all obeyed him.  He began to crawl
+through the mud, touching first this, then that, grasping
+the cushions by mistake, listening for the faintest whisper
+that might guide him.  He tried to light a match, holding
+the box in his teeth and striking at it with the uninjured
+hand.  At last he succeeded, and the light fell upon the
+bundle which he was seeking.
+
+It had rolled off the road into the wood a little way,
+and had fallen across a great rut.  So tiny it was that had
+it fallen lengthways it would have disappeared, and he might
+never have found it.
+
+"I stole it!  I and the idiot--no one was there."  She
+burst out laughing.
+
+He sat down and laid it on his knee.  Then he tried to
+cleanse the face from the mud and the rain and the tears. 
+His arm, he supposed, was broken, but he could still move it
+a little, and for the moment he forgot all pain.  He was
+listening--not for a cry, but for the tick of a heart or the
+slightest tremor of breath.
+
+"Where are you?" called a voice.  It was Miss Abbott,
+against whose carriage they had collided.  She had relit one
+of the lamps, and was picking her way towards him.
+
+"Silence!" he called again, and again they obeyed.  He
+shook the bundle; he breathed into it; he opened his coat
+and pressed it against him.  Then he listened, and heard
+nothing but the rain and the panting horses, and Harriet,
+who was somewhere chuckling to herself in the dark.
+
+Miss Abbott approached, and took it gently from him. 
+The face was already chilly, but thanks to Philip it was no
+longer wet.  Nor would it again be wetted by any tear.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+The details of Harriet's crime were never known.  In her
+illness she spoke more of the inlaid box that she lent to
+Lilia--lent, not given--than of recent troubles.  It was clear
+that she had gone prepared for an interview with Gino, and
+finding him out, she had yielded to a grotesque temptation. 
+But how far this was the result of ill-temper, to what
+extent she had been fortified by her religion, when and how
+she had met the poor idiot--these questions were never
+answered, nor did they interest Philip greatly.  Detection
+was certain: they would have been arrested by the police of
+Florence or Milan, or at the frontier.  As it was, they had
+been stopped in a simpler manner a few miles out of the town.
+
+As yet he could scarcely survey the thing.  It was too
+great.  Round the Italian baby who had died in the mud there
+centred deep passions and high hopes.  People had been
+wicked or wrong in the matter; no one save himself had been
+trivial.  Now the baby had gone, but there remained this
+vast apparatus of pride and pity and love.  For the dead,
+who seemed to take away so much, really take with them
+nothing that is ours.  The passion they have aroused lives
+after them, easy to transmute or to transfer, but well-nigh
+impossible to destroy.  And Philip knew that he was still
+voyaging on the same magnificent, perilous sea, with the sun
+or the clouds above him, and the tides below.
+
+The course of the moment--that, at all events, was
+certain.  He and no one else must take the news to Gino.  It
+was easy to talk of Harriet's crime--easy also to blame the
+negligent Perfetta or Mrs. Herriton at home.  Every one had
+contributed--even Miss Abbott and Irma.  If one chose, one
+might consider the catastrophe composite or the work of
+fate.  But Philip did not so choose.  It was his own fault,
+due to acknowledged weakness in his own character. 
+Therefore he, and no one else, must take the news of it to Gino.
+
+Nothing prevented him.  Miss Abbott was engaged with
+Harriet, and people had sprung out of the darkness and were
+conducting them towards some cottage.  Philip had only to
+get into the uninjured carriage and order the driver to
+return.  He was back at Monteriano after a two hours'
+absence.  Perfetta was in the house now, and greeted him
+cheerfully.  Pain, physical and mental, had made him
+stupid.  It was some time before he realized that she had
+never missed the child.
+
+Gino was still out.  The woman took him to the
+reception-room, just as she had taken Miss Abbott in the
+morning, and dusted a circle for him on one of the horsehair
+chairs.  But it was dark now, so she left the guest a little
+lamp.
+
+"I will be as quick as I can," she told him.  "But there
+are many streets in Monteriano; he is sometimes difficult to
+find.  I could not find him this morning."
+
+"Go first to the Caffe Garibaldi," said Philip,
+remembering that this was the hour appointed by his friends
+of yesterday.
+
+He occupied the time he was left alone not in
+thinking--there was nothing to think about; he simply had to
+tell a few facts--but in trying to make a sling for his
+broken arm.  The trouble was in the elbow-joint, and as long
+as he kept this motionless he could go on as usual.  But
+inflammation was beginning, and the slightest jar gave him
+agony.  The sling was not fitted before Gino leapt up the
+stairs, crying--
+
+"So you are back!  How glad I am!  We are all waiting--"
+
+Philip had seen too much to be nervous.  In low, even
+tones he told what had happened; and the other, also
+perfectly calm, heard him to the end.  In the silence
+Perfetta called up that she had forgotten the baby's evening
+milk; she must fetch it.  When she had gone Gino took up the
+lamp without a word, and they went into the other room.
+
+"My sister is ill," said Philip, "and Miss Abbott is
+guiltless.  I should be glad if you did not have to trouble them."
+
+Gino had stooped down by the way, and was feeling the
+place where his son had lain.  Now and then he frowned a
+little and glanced at Philip.
+
+"It is through me," he continued.  "It happened because
+I was cowardly and idle.  I have come to know what you will do."
+
+Gino had left the rug, and began to pat the table from
+the end, as if he was blind.  The action was so uncanny that
+Philip was driven to intervene.
+
+"Gently, man, gently; he is not here."
+
+He went up and touched him on the shoulder.
+
+He twitched away, and began to pass his hands over
+things more rapidly--over the table, the chairs, the entire
+floor, the walls as high as he could reach them.  Philip had
+not presumed to comfort him.  But now the tension was too
+great--he tried.
+
+"Break down, Gino; you must break down.  Scream and
+curse and give in for a little; you must break down."
+
+There was no reply, and no cessation of the sweeping hands.
+
+"It is time to be unhappy.  Break down or you will be
+ill like my sister.  You will go--"
+
+The tour of the room was over.  He had touched
+everything in it except Philip.  Now he approached him.  He
+face was that of a man who has lost his old reason for life
+and seeks a new one.
+
+"Gino!"
+
+He stopped for a moment; then he came nearer.  Philip
+stood his ground.
+
+"You are to do what you like with me, Gino.  Your son is
+dead, Gino.  He died in my arms, remember.  It does not
+excuse me; but he did die in my arms."
+
+The left hand came forward, slowly this time.  It
+hovered before Philip like an insect.  Then it descended and
+gripped him by his broken elbow.
+
+Philip struck out with all the strength of his other
+arm.  Gino fell to the blow without a cry or a word.
+
+"You brute!" exclaimed the Englishman.  "Kill me if you
+like!  But just you leave my broken arm alone."
+
+Then he was seized with remorse, and knelt beside his
+adversary and tried to revive him.  He managed to raise him
+up, and propped his body against his own.  He passed his arm
+round him.  Again he was filled with pity and tenderness. 
+He awaited the revival without fear, sure that both of them
+were safe at last.
+
+Gino recovered suddenly.  His lips moved.  For one
+blessed moment it seemed that he was going to speak.  But he
+scrambled up in silence, remembering everything, and he made
+not towards Philip, but towards the lamp.
+
+"Do what you like; but think first--"
+
+The lamp was tossed across the room, out through the
+loggia.  It broke against one of the trees below.  Philip
+began to cry out in the dark.
+
+Gino approached from behind and gave him a sharp pinch. 
+Philip spun round with a yell.  He had only been pinched on
+the back, but he knew what was in store for him.  He struck
+out, exhorting the devil to fight him, to kill him, to do
+anything but this.  Then he stumbled to the door.  It was
+open.  He lost his head, and, instead of turning down the
+stairs, he ran across the landing into the room opposite. 
+There he lay down on the floor between the stove and the
+skirting-board.
+
+His senses grew sharper.  He could hear Gino coming in
+on tiptoe.  He even knew what was passing in his mind, how
+now he was at fault, now he was hopeful, now he was
+wondering whether after all the victim had not escaped down
+the stairs.  There was a quick swoop above him, and then a
+low growl like a dog's.  Gino had broken his finger-nails
+against the stove.
+
+Physical pain is almost too terrible to bear.  We can
+just bear it when it comes by accident or for our good--as it
+generally does in modern life--except at school.  But when it
+is caused by the malignity of a man, full grown, fashioned
+like ourselves, all our control disappears.  Philip's one
+thought was to get away from that room at whatever sacrifice
+of nobility or pride.
+
+Gino was now at the further end of the room, groping by
+the little tables.  Suddenly the instinct came to him.  He
+crawled quickly to where Philip lay and had him clean by the
+elbow.
+
+The whole arm seemed red-hot, and the broken bone grated
+in the joint, sending out shoots of the essence of pain. 
+His other arm was pinioned against the wall, and Gino had
+trampled in behind the stove and was kneeling on his legs. 
+For the space of a minute he yelled and yelled with all the
+force of his lungs.  Then this solace was denied him.  The
+other hand, moist and strong, began to close round his throat.
+
+At first he was glad, for here, he thought, was death at
+last.  But it was only a new torture; perhaps Gino inherited
+the skill of his ancestors--and childlike ruffians who flung
+each other from the towers.  Just as the windpipe closed,
+the hand fell off, and Philip was revived by the motion of
+his arm.  And just as he was about to faint and gain at last
+one moment of oblivion, the motion stopped, and he would
+struggle instead against the pressure on his throat.
+
+Vivid pictures were dancing through the pain--Lilia dying
+some months back in this very house, Miss Abbott bending
+over the baby, his mother at home, now reading evening
+prayers to the servants.  He felt that he was growing
+weaker; his brain wandered; the agony did not seem so
+great.  Not all Gino's care could indefinitely postpone the
+end.  His yells and gurgles became mechanical--functions of
+the tortured flesh rather than true notes of indignation and
+despair.  He was conscious of a horrid tumbling.  Then his
+arm was pulled a little too roughly, and everything was
+quiet at last.
+
+"But your son is dead, Gino.  Your son is dead, dear
+Gino.  Your son is dead."
+
+The room was full of light, and Miss Abbott had Gino by
+the shoulders, holding him down in a chair.  She was
+exhausted with the struggle, and her arms were trembling.
+
+"What is the good of another death?  What is the good of
+more pain?"
+
+He too began to tremble.  Then he turned and looked
+curiously at Philip, whose face, covered with dust and foam,
+was visible by the stove.  Miss Abbott allowed him to get
+up, though she still held him firmly.  He gave a loud and
+curious cry--a cry of interrogation it might be called. 
+Below there was the noise of Perfetta returning with the
+baby's milk.
+
+"Go to him," said Miss Abbott, indicating Philip.  "Pick
+him up.  Treat him kindly."
+
+She released him, and he approached Philip slowly.  His
+eyes were filling with trouble.  He bent down, as if he
+would gently raise him up.
+
+"Help!  help!" moaned Philip.  His body had suffered too
+much from Gino.  It could not bear to be touched by him.
+
+Gino seemed to understand.  He stopped, crouched above
+him.  Miss Abbott herself came forward and lifted her friend
+in her arms.
+
+"Oh, the foul devil!" he murmured.  "Kill him!  Kill him
+for me."
+
+Miss Abbott laid him tenderly on the couch and wiped his
+face.  Then she said gravely to them both, "This thing stops
+here."
+
+"Latte!  latte!" cried Perfetta, hilariously ascending
+the stairs.
+
+"Remember," she continued, "there is to be no revenge. 
+I will have no more intentional evil.  We are not to fight
+with each other any more."
+
+"I shall never forgive him," sighed Philip.
+
+"Latte!  latte freschissima!  bianca come neve!" 
+Perfetta came in with another lamp and a little jug.
+
+Gino spoke for the first time.  "Put the milk on the
+table," he said.  "It will not be wanted in the other
+room."  The peril was over at last.  A great sob shook the
+whole body, another followed, and then he gave a piercing
+cry of woe, and stumbled towards Miss Abbott like a child
+and clung to her.
+
+All through the day Miss Abbott had seemed to Philip
+like a goddess, and more than ever did she seem so now. 
+Many people look younger and more intimate during great
+emotion.  But some there are who look older, and remote, and
+he could not think that there was little difference in
+years, and none in composition, between her and the man
+whose head was laid upon her breast.  Her eyes were open,
+full of infinite pity and full of majesty, as if they
+discerned the boundaries of sorrow, and saw unimaginable
+tracts beyond.  Such eyes he had seen in great pictures but
+never in a mortal.  Her hands were folded round the
+sufferer, stroking him lightly, for even a goddess can do no
+more than that.  And it seemed fitting, too, that she should
+bend her head and touch his forehead with her lips.
+
+Philip looked away, as he sometimes looked away from the
+great pictures where visible forms suddenly become
+inadequate for the things they have shown to us.  He was
+happy; he was assured that there was greatness in the
+world.  There came to him an earnest desire to be good
+through the example of this good woman.  He would try
+henceforward to be worthy of the things she had revealed. 
+Quietly, without hysterical prayers or banging of drums, he
+underwent conversion.  He was saved.
+
+"That milk," said she, "need not be wasted.  Take it,
+Signor Carella, and persuade Mr. Herriton to drink."
+
+Gino obeyed her, and carried the child's milk to
+Philip.  And Philip obeyed also and drank.
+
+"Is there any left?"
+
+"A little," answered Gino.
+
+"Then finish it."  For she was determined to use such
+remnants as lie about the world.
+
+"Will you not have some?"
+
+"I do not care for milk; finish it all."
+
+"Philip, have you had enough milk?"
+
+"Yes, thank you, Gino; finish it all."
+
+He drank the milk, and then, either by accident or in
+some spasm of pain, broke the jug to pieces.  Perfetta
+exclaimed in bewilderment.  "It does not matter," he told
+her.  "It does not matter.  It will never be wanted any
+more."
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+"He will have to marry her," said Philip.  "I heard from him
+this morning, just as we left Milan.  He finds he has gone
+too far to back out.  It would be expensive.  I don't know
+how much he minds--not as much as we suppose, I think.  At
+all events there's not a word of blame in the letter.  I
+don't believe he even feels angry.  I never was so
+completely forgiven.  Ever since you stopped him killing me,
+it has been a vision of perfect friendship.  He nursed me,
+he lied for me at the inquest, and at the funeral, though he
+was crying, you would have thought it was my son who had
+died.  Certainly I was the only person he had to be kind to;
+he was so distressed not to make Harriet's acquaintance, and
+that he scarcely saw anything of you.  In his letter he says
+so again."
+
+"Thank him, please, when you write," said Miss Abbott,
+"and give him my kindest regards."
+
+"Indeed I will."  He was surprised that she could slide
+away from the man so easily.  For his own part, he was bound
+by ties of almost alarming intimacy.  Gino had the southern
+knack of friendship.  In the intervals of business he would
+pull out Philip's life, turn it inside out, remodel it, and
+advise him how to use it for the best.  The sensation was
+pleasant, for he was a kind as well as a skilful operator. 
+But Philip came away feeling that he had not a secret corner
+left.  In that very letter Gino had again implored him, as a
+refuge from domestic difficulties, "to marry Miss Abbott,
+even if her dowry is small."  And how Miss Abbott herself,
+after such tragic intercourse, could resume the conventions
+and send calm messages of esteem, was more than he could
+understand.
+
+"When will you see him again?" she asked.  They were
+standing together in the corridor of the train, slowly
+ascending out of Italy towards the San Gothard tunnel.
+
+"I hope next spring.  Perhaps we shall paint Siena red
+for a day or two with some of the new wife's money.  It was
+one of the arguments for marrying her."
+
+"He has no heart," she said severely.  "He does not
+really mind about the child at all."
+
+"No; you're wrong.  He does.  He is unhappy, like the
+rest of us.  But he doesn't try to keep up appearances as we
+do.  He knows that the things that have made him happy once
+will probably make him happy again--"
+
+"He said he would never be happy again."
+
+"In his passion.  Not when he was calm.  We English say
+it when we are calm--when we do not really believe it any
+longer.  Gino is not ashamed of inconsistency.  It is one of
+the many things I like him for."
+
+"Yes; I was wrong.  That is so."
+
+"He's much more honest with himself than I am,"
+continued Philip, "and he is honest without an effort and
+without pride.  But you, Miss Abbott, what about you?  Will
+you be in Italy next spring?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'm sorry.  When will you come back, do you think?"
+
+"I think never."
+
+"For whatever reason?"  He stared at her as if she were
+some monstrosity.
+
+"Because I understand the place.  There is no need."
+
+"Understand Italy!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Well, I don't.  And I don't understand you," he
+murmured to himself, as he paced away from her up the
+corridor.  By this time he loved her very much, and he could
+not bear to be puzzled.  He had reached love by the
+spiritual path: her thoughts and her goodness and her
+nobility had moved him first, and now her whole body and all
+its gestures had become transfigured by them.  The beauties
+that are called obvious--the beauties of her hair and her
+voice and her limbs--he had noticed these last; Gino, who
+never traversed any path at all, had commended them
+dispassionately to his friend.
+
+Why was he so puzzling?  He had known so much about her
+once--what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her
+actions.  And now he only knew that he loved her, and all
+the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he
+needed it most.  Why would she never come to Italy again? 
+Why had she avoided himself and Gino ever since the evening
+that she had saved their lives?  The train was nearly
+empty.  Harriet slumbered in a compartment by herself.  He
+must ask her these questions now, and he returned quickly to
+her down the corridor.
+
+She greeted him with a question of her own.  "Are your
+plans decided?"
+
+"Yes.  I can't live at Sawston."
+
+"Have you told Mrs. Herriton?"
+
+"I wrote from Monteriano.  I tried to explain things;
+but she will never understand me.  Her view will be that the
+affair is settled--sadly settled since the baby is dead. 
+Still it's over; our family circle need be vexed no more. 
+She won't even be angry with you.  You see, you have done us
+no harm in the long run.  Unless, of course, you talk about
+Harriet and make a scandal.  So that is my plan--London and
+work.  What is yours?"
+
+"Poor Harriet!" said Miss Abbott.  "As if I dare judge
+Harriet!  Or anybody."  And without replying to Philip's
+question she left him to visit the other invalid.
+
+Philip gazed after her mournfully, and then he looked
+mournfully out of the window at the decreasing streams.  All
+the excitement was over--the inquest, Harriet's short
+illness, his own visit to the surgeon.  He was convalescent,
+both in body and spirit, but convalescence brought no joy. 
+In the looking-glass at the end of the corridor he saw his
+face haggard, and his shoulders pulled forward by the weight
+of the sling.  Life was greater than he had supposed, but it
+was even less complete.  He had seen the need for strenuous
+work and for righteousness.  And now he saw what a very
+little way those things would go.
+
+"Is Harriet going to be all right?" he asked.  Miss
+Abbott had come back to him.
+
+"She will soon be her old self," was the reply.  For
+Harriet, after a short paroxysm of illness and remorse, was
+quickly returning to her normal state.  She had been
+"thoroughly upset" as she phrased it, but she soon ceased to
+realize that anything was wrong beyond the death of a poor
+little child.  Already she spoke of "this unlucky accident,"
+and "the mysterious frustration of one's attempts to make
+things better."  Miss Abbott had seen that she was
+comfortable, and had given her a kind kiss.  But she
+returned feeling that Harriet, like her mother, considered
+the affair as settled.
+
+"I'm clear enough about Harriet's future, and about
+parts of my own.  But I ask again, What about yours?"
+
+"Sawston and work," said Miss Abbott.
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?" she asked, smiling.
+
+"You've seen too much.  You've seen as much and done
+more than I have."
+
+"But it's so different.  Of course I shall go to
+Sawston.  You forget my father; and even if he wasn't there,
+I've a hundred ties: my district--I'm neglecting it
+shamefully--my evening classes, the St. James'--"
+
+"Silly nonsense!" he exploded, suddenly moved to have
+the whole thing out with her.  "You're too good--about a
+thousand times better than I am.  You can't live in that
+hole; you must go among people who can hope to understand
+you.  I mind for myself.  I want to see you often--again
+and again."
+
+"Of course we shall meet whenever you come down; and I
+hope that it will mean often."
+
+"It's not enough; it'll only be in the old horrible way,
+each with a dozen relatives round us.  No, Miss Abbott; it's
+not good enough."
+
+"We can write at all events."
+
+"You will write?" he cried, with a flush of pleasure. 
+At times his hopes seemed so solid.
+
+"I will indeed."
+
+"But I say it's not enough--you can't go back to the old
+life if you wanted to.  Too much has happened."
+
+"I know that," she said sadly.
+
+"Not only pain and sorrow, but wonderful things: that
+tower in the sunlight--do you remember it, and all you said
+to me?  The theatre, even.  And the next day--in the church;
+and our times with Gino."
+
+"All the wonderful things are over," she said.  "That is
+just where it is."
+
+"I don't believe it.  At all events not for me.  The
+most wonderful things may be to come--"
+
+"The wonderful things are over," she repeated, and
+looked at him so mournfully that he dare not contradict
+her.  The train was crawling up the last ascent towards the
+Campanile of Airolo and the entrance of the tunnel.
+
+"Miss Abbott," he murmured, speaking quickly, as if
+their free intercourse might soon be ended, "what is the
+matter with you?  I thought I understood you, and I don't. 
+All those two great first days at Monteriano I read you as
+clearly as you read me still.  I saw why you had come, and
+why you changed sides, and afterwards I saw your wonderful
+courage and pity.  And now you're frank with me one moment,
+as you used to be, and the next moment you shut me up.  You
+see I owe too much to you--my life, and I don't know what
+besides.  I won't stand it.  You've gone too far to turn
+mysterious.  I'll quote what you said to me: 'Don't be
+mysterious; there isn't the time.' I'll quote something
+else: 'I and my life must be where I live.' You can't live
+at Sawston."
+
+He had moved her at last.  She whispered to herself
+hurriedly.  "It is tempting--"  And those three words threw
+him into a tumult of joy.  What was tempting to her?  After
+all was the greatest of things possible?  Perhaps, after
+long estrangement, after much tragedy, the South had brought
+them together in the end.  That laughter in the theatre,
+those silver stars in the purple sky, even the violets of a
+departed spring, all had helped, and sorrow had helped also,
+and so had tenderness to others.
+
+"It is tempting," she repeated, "not to be mysterious. 
+I've wanted often to tell you, and then been afraid.  I
+could never tell any one else, certainly no woman, and I
+think you're the one man who might understand and not be
+disgusted."
+
+"Are you lonely?" he whispered.  "Is it anything like that?"
+
+"Yes."  The train seemed to shake him towards her.  He
+was resolved that though a dozen people were looking, he
+would yet take her in his arms.  "I'm terribly lonely, or I
+wouldn't speak.  I think you must know already."  Their
+faces were crimson, as if the same thought was surging
+through them both.
+
+"Perhaps I do."  He came close to her.  "Perhaps I could
+speak instead.  But if you will say the word plainly you'll
+never be sorry; I will thank you for it all my life."
+
+She said plainly, "That I love him."  Then she broke
+down.  Her body was shaken with sobs, and lest there should
+be any doubt she cried between the sobs for Gino!  Gino!  Gino!
+
+He heard himself remark "Rather!  I love him too!  When
+I can forget how he hurt me that evening.  Though whenever
+we shake hands--"  One of them must have moved a step or two,
+for when she spoke again she was already a little way apart.
+
+"You've upset me."  She stifled something that was
+perilously near hysterics.  "I thought I was past all this. 
+You're taking it wrongly.  I'm in love with Gino--don't pass
+it off--I mean it crudely--you know what I mean.  So laugh at me."
+
+"Laugh at love?" asked Philip.
+
+"Yes.  Pull it to pieces.  Tell me I'm a fool or
+worse--that he's a cad.  Say all you said when Lilia fell in
+love with him.  That's the help I want.  I dare tell you
+this because I like you--and because you're without passion;
+you look on life as a spectacle; you don't enter it; you
+only find it funny or beautiful.  So I can trust you to cure
+me.  Mr. Herriton, isn't it funny?"  She tried to laugh
+herself, but became frightened and had to stop.  "He's not a
+gentleman, nor a Christian, nor good in any way.  He's never
+flattered me nor honoured me.  But because he's handsome,
+that's been enough.  The son of an Italian dentist, with a
+pretty face."  She repeated the phrase as if it was a charm
+against passion.  "Oh, Mr. Herriton, isn't it funny!"  Then,
+to his relief, she began to cry.  "I love him, and I'm not
+ashamed of it.  I love him, and I'm going to Sawston, and if
+I mayn't speak about him to you sometimes, I shall die."
+
+In that terrible discovery Philip managed to think not
+of himself but of her.  He did not lament.  He did not even
+speak to her kindly, for he saw that she could not stand
+it.  A flippant reply was what she asked and
+needed--something flippant and a little cynical.  And indeed
+it was the only reply he could trust himself to make.
+
+"Perhaps it is what the books call 'a passing fancy'?"
+
+She shook her head.  Even this question was too
+pathetic.  For as far as she knew anything about herself,
+she knew that her passions, once aroused, were sure.  "If I
+saw him often," she said, "I might remember what he is
+like.  Or he might grow old.  But I dare not risk it, so
+nothing can alter me now."
+
+"Well, if the fancy does pass, let me know."  After all,
+he could say what he wanted.
+
+"Oh, you shall know quick enough--"
+
+"But before you retire to Sawston--are you so mighty sure?"
+
+"What of?"  She had stopped crying.  He was treating her
+exactly as she had hoped.
+
+"That you and he--"  He smiled bitterly at the thought of
+them together.  Here was the cruel antique malice of the
+gods, such as they once sent forth against Pasiphae. 
+Centuries of aspiration and culture--and the world could not
+escape it.  "I was going to say--whatever have you got in
+common?"
+
+"Nothing except the times we have seen each other." 
+Again her face was crimson.  He turned his own face away.
+
+"Which--which times?"
+
+"The time I thought you weak and heedless, and went
+instead of you to get the baby.  That began it, as far as I
+know the beginning.  Or it may have begun when you took us
+to the theatre, and I saw him mixed up with music and
+light.  But didn't understand till the morning.  Then you
+opened the door--and I knew why I had been so happy. 
+Afterwards, in the church, I prayed for us all; not for
+anything new, but that we might just be as we were--he with
+the child he loved, you and I and Harriet safe out of the
+place--and that I might never see him or speak to him again. 
+I could have pulled through then--the thing was only coming
+near, like a wreath of smoke; it hadn't wrapped me round."
+
+"But through my fault," said Philip solemnly, "he is
+parted from the child he loves.  And because my life was in
+danger you came and saw him and spoke to him again."  For
+the thing was even greater than she imagined.  Nobody but
+himself would ever see round it now.  And to see round it he
+was standing at an immense distance.  He could even be glad
+that she had once held the beloved in her arms.
+
+"Don't talk of 'faults.' You're my friend for ever, Mr.
+Herriton, I think.  Only don't be charitable and shift or
+take the blame.  Get over supposing I'm refined.  That's
+what puzzles you.  Get over that."
+
+As he spoke she seemed to be transfigured, and to have
+indeed no part with refinement or unrefinement any longer. 
+Out of this wreck there was revealed to him something
+indestructible--something which she, who had given it, could
+never take away.
+
+"I say again, don't be charitable.  If he had asked me,
+I might have given myself body and soul.  That would have
+been the end of my rescue party.  But all through he took me
+for a superior being--a goddess.  I who was worshipping every
+inch of him, and every word he spoke.  And that saved me."
+
+Philip's eyes were fixed on the Campanile of Airolo. 
+But he saw instead the fair myth of Endymion.  This woman
+was a goddess to the end.  For her no love could be
+degrading: she stood outside all degradation.  This episode,
+which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for
+him, remained supremely beautiful.  To such a height was he
+lifted, that without regret he could now have told her that
+he was her worshipper too.  But what was the use of telling
+her?  For all the wonderful things had happened.
+
+"Thank you," was all that he permitted himself.  "Thank
+you for everything."
+
+She looked at him with great friendliness, for he had
+made her life endurable.  At that moment the train entered
+the San Gothard tunnel.  They hurried back to the carriage
+to close the windows lest the smuts should get into
+Harriet's eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Where Angels Fear to Tread
+