"The hour for which the ages sighed may not be so far away as
you think," he said to Marietta. "The curtain has risen upon
Act Three. I fancy I can perceive faint glimmerings of the
beginning of the end."




XIX


All that evening, something which he had not been conscious of
noticing especially when it was present to him--certainly he
had paid no conscious attention to its details--kept recurring
and recurring to Peter's memory: the appearance of the
prettily-arranged terrace-end at Ventirose: the white awning,
with the blue sky at its edges, the sunny park beyond; the
warm-hued carpets on the marble pavement; the wicker chairs,
with their bright cushions; the table, with its books and
bibelots--the yellow French books, a tortoise-shell paperknife,
a silver paperweight, a crystal smelling-bottle, a bowlful of
drooping poppies; and the marble balustrade, with its delicate
tracery of leaves and tendrils, where the jessamine twined
round its pillars.

This kept recurring, recurring, vividly, a picture that he
could see without closing his eyes, a picture with a very
decided sentiment. Like the gay and gleaming many-pinnacled
facade of her house, it seemed appropriate to her; it seemed in
its fashion to express her. Nay, it seemed to do more. It was