As he declined with thanks, Peter thought, "He's dying. Oh, poor chap,
how ghastly for him," and his immense pity made him even gentler than
usual. He couldn't say, "How are you?" because he knew; he couldn't
say, "Isn't this a nice place?" because Ashe must leave it so soon; he
couldn't say, "I am having a good time," because Ashe would have no
more good times, and, Peter suspected, had had few.

What he did say was, "This is Thomas. And this is San Francesco, and this
is Suor Clara. They're all mine. Do you like their faces?"

Ashe looked at Francesco, and said, "Rather a mongrel, isn't he?" and
Peter took the comment as condemning the four of them, and divined in
Ashe the respectability of the sheltered life, and was compassionate
again. Ashe cared, during the brief space of time allotted to him, to be
respectably dressed; he cared to lead what he would call a decent life.
Peter, in his disreputability, felt like a man in the open air who looks
into the prison of a sick-room.

Ashe said he was staying at Varenzano with his mother, and they were
passing through Castoleto on the way back from their afternoon's drive.

"It's lungs, you know. They don't give me much chance--the doctors, I
mean. It's warm and sheltered on this coast, so I have to be here. I'd
rather be here, I suppose, than doing a beef-and-snow cure in one of
those ghastly places. But it's a bore hanging round and doing nothing.
I'd as soon it ended straight off."

Ashamed of having been so communicative (but Peter was used to people
being unreserved with him, and never thought it odd), he changed the