Nothing that can befall us, optimists aver, is without its
value; and this, I have heard, is especially true if we happen
to be literary men. All is grist that comes to a writer's
mill.

By his present experience, accordingly, Peter learned--and in
the regretful prose of some future masterpiece will perhaps be
enabled to remember--how exceeding great is the impatience of
the lovesick, with what febrile vehemence the smitten heart can
burn, and to what improbable lengths hours and minutes can on
occasions stretch themselves.

He tried many methods of distraction.

There was always the panorama of his valley--the dark-blue
lake, pale Monte Sfiorito, the frowning Gnisi, the smiling
uplands westward. There were always the sky, the clouds, the
clear sunshine, the crisp-etched shadows; and in the afternoon
there was always the wondrous opalescent haze of August,
filling every distance. There was always his garden--there
were the great trees, with the light sifting through high
spaces of feathery green; there were the flowers, the birds,
the bees, the butterflies, with their colour, and their
fragrance, and their music; there was his tinkling fountain,
in its nimbus of prismatic spray; there was the swift, symbolic
Aco. And then, at a half-hour's walk, there was the pretty
pink-stuccoed village, with its hill-top church, its odd
little shrines, its grim-grotesque ossuary, its faded frescoed
house-fronts, its busy, vociferous, out-of-door Italian life:
--the cobbler tapping in his stall; women gossiping at their