XXII


Peter, we may suppose, returned to Villa Floriano that
afternoon in a state of some excitement.

"He ought to have told her--"

"It was her right to be told--"

"What could her rank matter--"

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

"She would have despised the conventional barriers--"

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

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

"Every man gets the wife he deserves--and he had certainly gone
a long way towards deserving her--"

"He should simply have told her the story of his book and of
her part in it--he need n't have mentioned love--she would have
understood--"

The Duchessa's voice, clear and cool and crisp-cut, sounded
perpetually in his ears; the words she had spoken, the
arguments she had urged, repeated and repeated themselves,