danced round and round, in his memory.

"Ought I to have told her--then and there? Shall I go to her
and tell her to-morrow?"

He tried to think; but he could not think. His faculties were
in a whirl--he could by no means command them. He could only
wait, inert, while the dance went on. It was an extremely
riotous dance. The Duchessa's conversation was reproduced
without sequence, without coherence--scattered fragments of it
were flashed before him fitfully, in swift disorder. If he
would attempt to seize upon one of those fragments, to detain
and fix it, for consideration--a speech of hers, a look, an
inflection--then the whole experience suddenly lost its
outlines, his recollection of it became a jumble, and he was
left, as it were, intellectually gasping.

He walked about his garden, he went into the house, he came
out, he walked about again. he went in and dressed for dinner,
he
sat on his rustic bench, he smoked cigarette after cigarette.

"Ought I to have told her? Ought I to tell her to-morrow?"

At moments there would come a lull in the turmoil, an interval
of quiet, of apparent clearness; and the answer would seem
perfectly plain.

"Of course, you ought to tell her. Tell her--and all will be
well. She has put herself in the supposititious woman's place,