"Good-bye," she said, and lightly rode away.

"So-ho! Her bigotry is not such a negligible quantity, after
all," Peter concluded.

"But what," he demanded of Marietta, as she ministered to his
wants at dinner, "what does one barrier more or less matter,
when people are already divided by a gulf that never can be
traversed? You see that river?" He pointed through his open
window to the Aco. "It is a symbol. She stands on one side of
it, I stand on the other, and we exchange little jokes. But
the river is always there, flowing between us, separating us.
She is the daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke, and the
fairest of her sex, and a millionaire, and a Roman Catholic.
What am I? Oh, I don't deny I 'm clever. But for the rest?
. . . My dear Marietta, I am simply, in one word, the victim
of a misplaced attachment."

"Non capisco Francese," said Marietta.




XIV


And after that, for I forget how many days, Peter and the
Duchessa did not meet; and so he sank low and lower in his
mind.