chapter would have added itself to the history of the world; a
great event, a great step forward, would have definitely taken
place. He would have been received at Ventirose as a friend.
He would be no longer a mere nodding acquaintance, owing even
that meagre relationship to the haphazard of propinquity. The
ice-broken, if you will, but still present in abundance--would
have been gently thawed away. One era had passed; but then a
new era would have begun.

So he turned his back upon Villa F'loriano, and. set off,
high-hearted, up the wide lawns, under the bending trees
--whither, on four red-marked occasions, he had watched her
disappear--towards the castle, which faced him in its vast
irregular picturesqueness. There were the oldest portions,
grimly mediaeval, a lakeside fortress, with ponderous round
towers, meurtrieres, machiolations, its grey stone walls
discoloured in fantastic streaks and patches by weather-stains
and lichens, or else shaggily overgrown by creepers. Then
there were later portions, rectangular, pink-stuccoed, with
rusticated work at the corners, and, on the blank spaces
between the windows, quaint allegorical frescoes, faded, half
washed-out. And then there were entirely modern-looking
portions, of gleaming marble, with numberless fanciful
carvings, spires, pinnacles, reliefs--wonderfully light, gay,
habitable, and (Peter thought) beautiful, in the clear Italian
atmosphere, against the blue Italian sky.

"It's a perfect house for her," he said. "It suits her--like
an appropriate garment; it almost seems to express her."