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Title:      World So Wide (1951)Author:     Sinclair Lewis* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.:  0301121h.htmlLanguage:   EnglishDate first posted:          August 2003Date most recently updated: August 2003This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.caProject Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online atgutenberg.net.au/licence.htmlTo contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The traffic policemen and the two detectives from the homicidesquad examined the tracks of the car and were convinced that asoft shoulder of the road had given way.

They had been returning from Bison Park, after midnight butquite sober. Hayden Chart was driving the convertible and hatinghis wife, Caprice, and hating himself for hating her. He was notgiven to grudges and, despite her glitter of pale-green dinnerdress and her glitter of derisive gossip, Caprice was a simpletonwho no more deserved hatred than did a noisy child. But she didchatter so. It wore Hayden down like a telephone bell ringingincessantly in an empty house.

She gabbled, "Jesse Bradbin is so dumb! He's an absolute hick,and he's about as much of an architect as my left foot. Whycouldn't you get a smarter partner? Andis he a lousybridge player! Is he ever!"

"He's not bad."

"No, it's his cluck of a wife that really gets me down. In mycandid opinion, Mary Eliza Bradbin is the worst dose of vinegarin Newlife; the most hypocritical combination of piousness andsecret drinking I ever ran into. And always criticizing some poorbunny. You pretend like you like everybody, but even you got toadmit Mary Eliza is a pain in the neck. Isn't she, huh? Isn'tshe?"

"Yes. Stupid. But means well," said Hayden Chart.

"She means poison, that's what she means!"

The scolding did not become Caprice, thought Hayden. She waselfin, tiny and quick and rose and pale gold, given toaffectionate giggles in between her miaows. If she would onlyshut up, he sighed, he could go on loving her like a dutifulhusband--perhaps.

He longed for silence. Especially on a moony night like this,driving on smooth cement with this suave engine, he liked to lookup at the mountains against the moon-pale sky, to look withsatisfaction at the houses he himself had planned in these comelynew suburbs of Newlife, "the fastest-growing city inColorado"--Newlife, with its skyscrapers set among flat one-storysupply-houses for silver miners and sheep-ranchers; Newlife andits symphony orchestra, with a Spanish conductor, playing in aRenaissance temple where a fiery dance-hall had stood but twentyyears before. Newlife had swollen from 30,000 to 300,000 inthirty years, and it expected a million in another thirty.

And in Newlife no firm was more enterprising than Chart,Bradbin & Chart, architects: the heavy-handed Jesse Bradbin,aged sixty, and the thirty-five-year-old Hayden, who was slim andcompact and patient, and given to playing tennis and readingbiography.

He did not know Caprice. It would always be his fault withwomen that his imagination darted into their inner minds, thoughtwith and through their minds. He took their side even againsthimself, and saw to it, thus, that he invariably lost in the waragainst women.

He could not even be thunderous with a woman client guilty ofthe most sickening of crimes (except for not paying the bill):wanting what she wanted in a house and not what the architectknew was good for her. He was both maddened and sympathetic nowwhen Caprice, exasperated at not having made him pay moreattention to her, started all her little tricks of propaganda,which mutely shrieked, "Notice me--notice me!"

Holding it visibly high, from her lizard-skin evening bag shetook out her gold-link purse; out of the purse she took a packagein silver paper; out of the silver paper she took the prize shehad just won at bridge: a brooch of imitation jade. Then shewrapped up the brooch, put the silver paper in her purse, put thepurse in the bag, loudly clicked the bag shut, loudly clicked itopen again, took out the purse, took out the silver paper . ..

She was capable of doing this over and over until he testifiedto her powers of torture by scolding her.

But tonight his anger at her petty bullying was lost in pitythat, at slightly over thirty, she should still have the mind ofa child delighted by any sort of gift. He made himself say toher, civilly, "That's a nice jade charm. I'm glad you wonit."

Now that she had made him recognize her presence, she returnedto her gabbing, but more spitefully; she did what she gleefullycalled "needling him a little."

"But you, big boy, wereyou ever terrible tonight! Youplayed worse than Mary Eliza. You got no more card sense than azebra. But what amused me, when it didn't get me sore--oh, youdidn't think I noticed; you think you're such a smoothie aboutcovering up your sniffing around after women--what had me sunkwas the way you kept sneaking in a look at Roxanna's ankles andAlice's buz-zoom and Jane's god-awful lipstick. You'd bethe most ridiculous tail-waving cat out on the tiles, ifit wasn't that you're such a coward!"

His irritation, sparking into wrath at this injustice, mayhave made his hand twitch on the steering wheel, or it may havebeen entirely the soft shoulder of the highway caving in.Whichever, the car was suddenly and appallingly shooting off theembanked road, and as he protested, "This can't be happening tome!" they were turning over and over in air.

There was something comic in that grotesque horror. The roofwas below him, then the car upended like a rearing horse, thenhis head had struck the roof and afterward the windshield, thenthe whirling cosmos banged down, and the side window was belowhim, on the earth, then up beside him again, and they were still.The huge noise dissolved into a huge blank silence, and the carshook like a panting animal. They were tilted, but nearlyright-side-up.

He thought that his head was bleeding and both his arms brokenand he knew that he was very sick and that Caprice was not therebeside him.

"Where are you? Darling!" he was screaming--he was trying toscream, while he realized that his voice was choked. He thoughthe could hear a small shaky answer from her, but he was so dazedthat he could not be sure whether it was a moan or a sneer. Withagony he managed to turn his head enough to make out theirsituation. With a freakishness like that of a tornado, Capriceseemed to have been thrown into the shallow back seat, and thelight fabric top of the convertible had been so deeply dentedthat she was imprisoned there, with only an aperture between thetwo seats large enough for him to hear her sobbing; not largeenough for either of them to pass. In any case, he could not movefar. He was jammed between the seat and the twisted steeringpost. The glass had been ripped clear out of the windshield; itseemed to have slashed his scalp.

"Caprice!"

"Ohhhhhh . . ."

"Can you move? Can you reach me?"

"Ohhhhhh . . ."

"Are you hurt badly?"

"I don't know. . . . Oh, yes, my neck--hurts dreadfully."

More than the pain which beat in a steady rhythm of agony inan arc that traversed his head, he felt anxiety for her--with herpoor, pretty jade charm. For perhaps the first time this pastyear or so, he felt not just a resigned endurance of her malice,but an active affection, a desire to sacrifice himself to helpher.

He was trying to shout for help, expecting to be rescued, tohave aid at once. But his voice was a parched trickle, weak asthat of an ailing baby. He struggled to raise his head from thecool upholstery against which his cheek rested, and look throughthe empty windshield frame. He perceived, in a dull, sick way,that they were in a brush-thick hollow far down below the levelof the highway, hidden from it. Even were it not night, theywould not be seen, be heard, from any of the rushing automobileswhose lights, innumerable and swift, level comet-tracks, weredarting above them, with the steady swish of tires on cement.

Caprice and he might lie here, bleeding, stranglingly thirsty,for many nights and days.

He could hear Caprice's voice, in a tiny angry scolding:

"Inexcusable carelessness, and you always claim to be such agood driver and then practically killing me!"

He agreed with her. He did love her so much! If he had of latethought himself indifferent to her, it had been only theself-absorbed busyness of a craftsman, he told himself.

He was not sure just how conscious she was, back there, as sheprattled away more and more spitefully:

"Why don't youdo something? Get out and get some help,not sit there and wait for somebody to find us! Always sohelpless and never, never think about what I may want or need oranything!"

A snigger then of dainty malice, the cat sniggering as itpatted the dying mouse:

"Oh, not you! Always so high-and-mighty and cultured, tellingeverybody about these big thick history books you're alwaysreading, and you never really finish any of 'em! Ridiculousspectacle of yourself, and everybody laughing at you. Pretendingyou're so hot and bothered about classical music and oh yes, ofcourse, just have to have it on the radio when you're reading,and never hear one note! Oh, I've proved it! I've switched it tojazz and you never even noticed. Not mind your being so phony ifyou weren't so clumsy about it and everybody gets onto you--whata goat!"

In his mind he pleaded with her, "Don't, oh, please don't, notnow when I've turned back to you. Let me go on loving you!"

His head seemed to have stopped bleeding but it was all athick mass of aching, his throat was dry as a desert water-hole,and he could not make out a word now as she cackled on, deliriousand incomprehensible. He was losing account of time. Had hepassed out, had he been unconscious?

They could both die here before they were found. Was this theend of everything?

"Is this all I'm going to get from life? I've done so littleand seen so little out of all I wanted. In college, that Kiplingthing, 'For to admire and for to see, I've wandered o'er theworld so wide.' I was going to see everything, everywhere."

He made a monstrous list of the things he had wanted, now thatit was, no doubt, too late ever to do them. To be state tennischampion. To camp in British Columbia and have a winter in theCaribbean. To speak French and live in Paris and know wines andmeet dashing actresses and wise old men with spade beards. Tolive for months overlooking a monastery garden, mystic andcontemplative.

(It would have to be an Episcopal monastery, though, wouldn'tit? His great-great-grandfather had been Church of England Bishopof North Carolina.)

And--a familiar dream which he had illustrated with drawingson stray envelopes--now he would never build that prairie villagewhich was to have been all housed in one skyscraper: the firstsolution in history of rural isolation and loneliness. He couldhave done it, too! He was amazed that these hands, this achingbrain, so hotly alive now, might at a moment crumble indissolution.

Too late? But if he did get free from this prison, he wouldrenounce his routine provincial life and follow every one of hisfantasies.

Surely Caprice would come with him--perhaps she would.There were no children to consider, even after their eight yearsof marriage, nor did Caprice really want any. At thirty-five,with enough money earned by himself or inherited from his father,who had founded their architectural firm, he was freer than ateighteen.

With his even tan, his small mustache, his erect slenderness,Hayden Chart might have been a Scotch major or a Yorkshire man.His face was thin, and people said that his eyes were kind. In abusiness world where so many hustlers like Jesse Bradbin wereinclined to be damply enthusiastic and clammy to the handshake,there was a fine, dry, hard quality about Hayden, the quality ofa polished dagger.

The dagger had been too long sheathed.

Caprice was still muttering on, scarcely heard, with a soundlike dry leaves shifting in an autumn breeze. His pity for hergrew more passionate. She was so youthful, at thirty-one; she hadso loved this new automobile and everything in their new Georgianbrick house, from the deep-freeze and the red-and-black tiledrumpus-room to her dressing room, all crystal and frillycurtains. With a heartier, blunter, more alcoholic husband, shewould have exulted in a life of dancing and risky gambling. Hehad always hurt her, Hayden sighed, and he hadn't meant to, henever had meant to.

He was keeping up, this while, an effort to shout whichmangled his throat yet seemed no louder than a moan. But he mayhave been heard.

Near them, a match was lighted and held up, revealing thetwisted hood of the car and a scared, bearded, rustic facepeering in through the windshield frame. Hayden managed a gasp of"Get help!" The match went out, and his battered consciousnesswent out with it.

In a shaky dream he saw or thought he saw the car flooded withlight from a wrecker, felt himself being eased out from behindthe steering wheel and lifted from the car, and swift surgicalfingers about his scalp and his arms. His mind faded again,complete, and he never knew whether he had seen or merely thoughthe had seen the broken, still body of Caprice. For years heseemed to have been protesting, "Such a pretty toy and so frail;they shouldn't have hurt her."

He came clearly to in a hospital, with his head bandaged andDr. Crittenham, their mild indecisive family physician, by thebed. He felt miraculously safe, and not for two days did he knowthat Caprice had been buried the day before, and that he wasdesolatingly free to wander in a world too bleakly, toointimidatingly wide.

He could feel the strength flowing back into him, like a slowand steady sea tide, and that flowing life, that mysterious busyworkmanship of nature, was repairing his broken arms, hiscontused skull, though it could not yet repair the bruised mindin which, incessantly, he agonized that he had killed hishelpless child, Caprice, and with her killed the right tolove.

He feebly wanted to get out of this, away from clucking nursesand Dr. Crittenham's owlish peering and the horrible scrambledeggs and cold toast. He wanted to be working, to be takenseriously again as part of the cheerful world that goes daily toits work. But, hazily forming, more and more resentful, was arealization that for a long while yet he could not endure fussyclients: well-to-do women demanding tiled baths, an assembly-linekitchen, a forty-by-thirty living room and innumerable cedarclosets, for the price of a four-room bungalow.

As indignant as though he were still in his office arguingwith them, he remembered the mean and cheating determination notto be cheated which was characteristic of women who had neverbeen in business: those tight lips, that smell of rottencarnations, that snarling, "Well, I mustsay, I thought a'architect was supposed to look after folks' interests, not tryand rob them!"

He recalled whole families of clients: Father standing back,looking anxious, hoping that The Wife wouldn't run him into toomuch money. Father himself would be satisfied with anything froma domestic tomb made of cement blocks to a Samoan grass hut,provided they got a good heating plant, but Sistie kept repeatingthat they must have a place to dance, and Junior had incessantnew ideas: a closet for skis, a bowling alley, a swimming pooland, while they were about it, why not a four-car garage insteadof a two-car shanty?

"I can't take it! What they all demand! Now I know how thedoctor feels when I complain about the diet here, and theinjections!"

Nor could he take the demands of the unions, nor theshiftiness of tough contractors, nor the delays in bank loansnor, least of all, the violently active idleness of his olderpartner.

Jesse objected to the wages of the draftsmen, to time spent ontwice-daily inspections of operations; he tried to wiggle intoevery new building job in town; and he repeated everything hesaid to you, repeated it with emphasis, as though--even when hehad nothing weightier to communicate than the chance of raintoday--he were revealing a message from Heaven.

Between the two sections of his thundering verbal trains,Jesse always put in a "See whatta mean?" He ruled, "Dead certainto be a cold fall, this fall, see whatta mean? Deadcertain--whatta mean--a cold fall!"

Life could have been tremulous with noble emotions andcultivated senses--or so the poets informed him, Haydensighed--and was he to spend its swift flicker in listening to anold miser bellowing, "See whatta mean"? Whenever Hayden had anotion for a warehouse that should be something more than aprison, Jesse protested, "You long-haired artists give me a pain.I'm a practical man!"

It was painful that while Jesse regarded him as an anarchist,the local Modernist and Functionalist and general Impossiblist,Mr. Kivi from Finland--Doctor Kivi--considered Hayden "anize fella personal, but yoost anudder old-fashion architecturaltailor, giffing the dumb bourgeois whateffer kind suitings deytink dey vant."

"I need, in fact, a year off," reflected Hayden, "and I'mgoing to take that year off, and find out whether I can doanything more amusing than being batted over the net by Jesse andbatted back by Kivi. I think that I would like to be aself-respecting human being, and even learn to read!"

He could amply afford the year off. As a young architect hehad, on speculation, planned a large Merchandise Mart, and hisshare in that alone would give him a rather tight living. Herenewed now his regret, in the prison of the wrecked car, that hehad missed so many treasures of learning. Compared with JesseBradbin, he was an encyclopedia but, lying in bed, annoyed whenthe day nurse tried to entertain him with what she thought sheremembered of a radio skit, he made lists of the things he didnot know.

He knew nothing, very nearly, of Byzantine or Egyptian,Chinese or Hindu architecture. He spoke no foreignlanguage--should not an educated man be able to speak French andGerman, along with Italian or Spanish? He had only a mail-ordersmattering of music, painting; he had never read Dante or Goethenor anything of Shakespeare except the plays on which he had beenspoon-fed at Amherst; he was innocent of chemistry and astronomy;and of history before 1776 he was certain only that there hadbeen Gothic and Renaissance churches and that America had beendiscovered, from time to time, by a lot of Scandinavians and by agentleman called Christopher Columbus, who had trained for it bycontinually standing eggs on end.

He had assumed that he would be classed as a Civilized Man. Hewondered now if he was not a jungle-dwelling cannibal withouteven an expert knowledge of how to catch and cook prime humanbeings. How proud he had been that--to Caprice's rage--on manyevenings, instead of highball parties, he had gone to bed atnine-thirty and "got ten good hours of sleep." Now he speculatedthat he had probably been wasting three hours a day of thistoo-brief life in snoozing like a hobo by the railroadtracks.

Could he make up for all that?

As a starter, he longed for first-hand sight of the Europewhich is the mother of most Americans as it is of theMongolian-Chaldaic-Saracen-Slav races who call themselvesEuropean. His nearest step to it had been a wander-month inEngland with a couple of classmates after their graduation fromAmherst. The glory of the English cathedrals had decided him tobe an architect, like his father. Before he could go on to theContinent, he had been called home by the illness of his mother.He had gone to a New York school of architecture, and that wasthe end of Romany Rye.

In World War II, he had been a major, but he had been kept inthe United States, constructing miles of huts and warehouses.Before it, he had sat in on the designing of banks, officebuildings, churches, but he had become a specialist in"medium-priced housing," along with an occasionalLabrador-Spanish palace for a stockman, or this very hospitalthat was his detention camp.

He loved Litchfield, Sharon, Williamsburg; he preferred theGeorgian, and he had theories about developing a truly Americanstyle. He was called a plodder by all the Kivis, and in turn hedisliked their bleak blocks of Modernist cement, theirglass-fronted hen-houses, their architectural spiders withcantilever claws.

Yet now he wanted to desert his solid American brick andtimber and flee to the stone and thatch of the heathen gods ofEurope.

With all his dismaying thoughts, he excitedly worked out aphilosophy of hope which he called the Doctrine of RecoveredYouth.

He meditated upon it through the motionless hours when heawoke at three in the morning and could not sleep again tillafter breakfast. He heard the small derisive night noises: apoliceman plodding down the street, a drunk singing, a wildambulance screaming, a woman crying, then the banging of the ashcans. He looked for hours at the plaster walls and wished thatinstead of making this hospital crisp and hygienic, he hadcreated an orgy of Alhambra harem decoration, to entertainsleepless patients suffering through the gray hours. Over andover he sighed about the lost wisdoms he had missed, till fromnowhere, sharp, exhilarating, came the faith that he had notmissed them, that they could be ahead of him.

The Doctrine of Recovered Youth. He was to spend notime in regretting failures but to concentrate on what he coulddo in a future that was ready to his hand.

He was not to think back fifteen years to the time when he wastwenty, credulous and enthusiastic, when he was strong forwalking, for singing, for making love. He was to look fifteenyears ahead to the time when he would be fifty--and a fine,sound, competent age that was, too, when he ought to be able toeat and laugh and make love as well as ever. Compared with fifty,he stillwas young, hehad recovered youth. Ah, theblazing wonders he was going to experience in these fifteen yearsahead, with perhaps another twenty-five years on top of that! Hewas going to see all of the world so wide.

His acquaintances were presently allowed to call on him, andthe strange thing, in his fast-recovering strength, was that hedid not want to see many of them. He was impatient with thetedious past which these fellow-clansmen so tenderly dragged in,certain that he would be delighted to hear how everything hadbeen going with Dear Old Bill Smith, the celebrated fisherman anddrunk, delighted to get all the shivery details of the membershipdrive of the Bison Park Country Club.

It had been assumed, he himself had half assumed, that he wasgregarious, fond of being yelled at by a dozen people in a smallroom, for this was expected of any competent professional man inNewlife. He discovered in this, his first pious retreat sincecollege, that it had been an enforced habit, and that hepreferred the sweetness of silence to even the newest smuttystory.

But such treachery to American good-fellowship he keptconcealed. He tried to be grateful to all the kind men who, atsuch inconvenience, during busy days, took off an hour to "run inand cheer up good ole Hay," by bellowing at him, "Well, well,well, well, you certainly look fine today, you certainly do, youlook well on the way to recovery, so take good care yourself, besure and take care yourself now, and let me know anything I cando for you."

They would have been shocked, Civic Virtue in Newlife wouldhave rocked, if he had said, "There is one thing you can do: goaway and don't come back."

The agonizing crisis of these visitations was when theystopped mid-sentence and he knew that, with obscene tact, theywere avoiding even a natural mention of the dead Caprice, orwhen, instead, they dragged in her poor remains and overpraisedher. He told himself that the profoundest reason why he wishedthey would forget Caprice was that he was in love with hispurified memory of her. All round her shrine was a cloister whereno heathen were allowed to tread.

He felt wan and reedy as he sat up in bed in his coarsehospital nightgown, while Jesse Bradbin, tilting back and forth,back and forth, in a straight chair, looked like a fly-blown legof beef. Jesse held out his whisky flask with a roar of, "Try anip of this--Mother's Knee Bourbon. Your doc would throw a fit,but it's time for you to get back in harness again, see whattamean, get back in shape and have a little fun, see whattamean?"

"Thanks, no. Uh--Jesse, I may take some time off when I'm outof the hospital."

"What d' you think you want to do?"

"I might skip out to California--try loafing in the sun, maybecatch up on my reading."

"Well, I suppose a month of that wouldn't hurt you, thoughit'll be blame inconvenient."

"Not a month. Maybe I'll take a year off."

"A--ayear? Great good suffering catfish! That accidentknocked all the whatever sense you've got clean out of your head,see whatta mean, knocked out all what sense you got! You're crazyas a loon! Ayear? With a bunch of new contracts insight?"

"I'll find you a good substitute."

"If you went and found me a Cass Gilbert--at thirty bucks aweek--I'd still be dodging my duty toward you, as a partner, asan intimate friend, as a fellow-Coloradan, see whattamean--dodging my duty. I got a moral responsibility toward you,now that Caprice has passed on. Got to be somebody to take careof you and get you straightened out and direct you and try to putsome common sense and dependability into that damn-fool poeticalbrain of yours. No, sir-ee! The way to forget that poor girl andyour own shaking up is to hustle and get back on the job and workharder than ever. You'll be surprised how you'll enjoy it,getting away from all this unhealthythinking! Back intothe fray! You'll enjoy it, see whatta mean--enjoy it. You alwaysdid like chatting and chinning and visiting with the ladyclients, you old rogue! Heh, heh?"

"Got to have some sleep now," muttered Hayden wearily.

But that missionary of manly enterprise, Mr. Bradbin, had notbeen entirely without moral effect. Hayden reflected, "To go backto the office now would be the most horrible punishment I canthink of, and perhaps that's why I must do it. I must endure aheavy penance to make up, in some tiny degree, for killingCaprice. Oh, she only wanted to dance in the sun! I murdered her,and her revenge is that I have never been so bound to her asnow.

"I shall not look at another woman, all my life. I shall neverbe that romantic wanderer, that troubadour in a ribbon-tied jeepsinging through Provence, that I dreamed of. Suffering has mademe prosaic. I may just as well go back to the office and selleverybody on attic-insulation. I'm finished. If I were onlytwenty again, and strong and unafraid . . ."

The day nurse, who considered Mr. Hayden Chart an edifying butsomewhat depressing model of dignity who "will never give anyskirt a tumble since his wife had passed away," was surprised bythe vigor with which he demanded, "Show her right in!" when sheannounced Miss Roxanna Eldritch.

Roxanna Eldritch--Roxy--had been a friend of Caprice, as fondas she of gin-rummy and skiing and aquaplaning, but three or fouryears younger and altogether a more solid and good-temperedcitizeness. She was a reporter on the NewlifeEveningTelescope, and she wrote not only of Society and its fabulousorange-flavored weddings (or Nuptials, if the groom made over tenthousand a year) but capably handled general assignments:interviews with lecturers and with remarkably intelligent horses,hardware-association dinners, and even such big news as analderman's explanation of how he had just happened to pick up onthe street the marked bills found in his desk.

Roxy came in like a shy mouse, but a mouse that willimmediately start waltzing if the cat is asleep. She was asmallish, blue-eyed redhead, with the richest deep-copper hair,and the fair skin and jaunty freckles of the redhead. She was notplump, and her ankles were fine-drawn, but she was rounded andappetizing. Even old friends of her father, an unimportantbeet-sugar broker, though they feared that Roxy would laugh atthem, found it hard to keep their hands off her.

Sometimes, in white flannel at ten in the morning, she lookedtwenty-two and ready for tennis; sometimes, late in the evening,she looked an old, old, haggard twenty-nine, a veteran who hasmet too many public men and heard them boasting, for the benefitof Press & Public, of how many extraordinary things they weregoing to do as soon as this astonishing grand-jury indictment wasquashed.

She stood in the doorway, glancing sharply at Hayden as heyanked a red-and-yellow Navajo blanket about his shoulders andsmoothed his hair.

"My gracious, you look like a lily!" said Roxy. "How'severything in Astolat? Elaine back from Camelot yet? Buthonestly, Hay, you're in wonderful shape. I am so glad!"

Her voice was warm and kind, though it did have a bit ofwestern flatness, the voice of a bird flying at dun twilight overthe western plains.

"I'm getting all right, Roxy. Nice you came."

"Sit down a minute? Really came to ask you whether you'd likecigarettes or candy or detective stories. I'm sure you've had toomany flowers."

"Enough so that they rather horribly suggested a funeral. Thesteamfitters' union sent me about half a mile of forget-me-nots.I thought that was rather sinister."

"When do you think you'll be ready for some tennis, Hay? I'myour man. You'll have to be careful, and of course I gambolaround the court like a furniture truck, but you're so muchneater than I am that you'll still lick me every set."

He had been thinking that she was very like Caprice, thatessentially shewas Caprice, was every dance-mad,cocktail-gulping young female in Newlife, but he reflected that,no, Roxanna had more humor, sympathy, industry than the Caprices.But he was jarred to find, in the zest with which he looked atRoxy's luscious throat and breast, that he had fallen withludicrous haste from his mystic worship of Caprice's wistful andshadowy image.

Roxanna could not have noticed any ruefulness in him. She wastoo excited about making her announcement:

"I just wanted to say, if we do get in any tennis, it willhave to be quick, because as soon as I get my passport and learnhow to say 'Where's the depot?' in English English, I'm going toEurope. By myself!"

"No!"

"My managing editor--next year there'll be a lot of pilgrimsfrom here going to Rome and so on for the Holy Year, and heallowed it might be a good idea to get the lowdown on what makesthere now, all over Europe. I'm to do a series for theTelescope and outlying sheets on how you eat and sleep andper combien on good American dollars--or is itparcombien?--in the Old Country. Oh, Hay, I try to be flippantabout it, but I'm awed to death and scared to death! Think, pal,I'll be seeing English rose gardens and the midnight sun inSweden and Paris cafés and the Colosseum!"

It was at that moment that, without knowing it, Hayden startedfor Europe.

There were hesitations, worries, preparations to be gotthrough. Dr. and Mrs. Windelbank called on him. He was a dentistwith a taste for attending lectures, about which he discoursed topatients when he had them racked in the chair with cotton rollsin their mouths, and his lady gave talks on gardening. They camein now to boast that they too were going to Europe, and not onone of your ridiculous three-week tours. No, they would flyacross and have an entire month just for sightseeing, with twoentire days in Venice, two in Florence, and three in Rome!

For years the Windelbanks had gloried in their annualadventures: their journeys to Mexico, to Alaska, and the FamousHomes of New England, including Coolidge's, and they implied thatHayden was a stick-in-the-mud, without imagination.

Clearly, he had to go and spend a couple of months abroad inrevenge upon these loving neighbors. Yet even this natural humanspite may have moved him less than the superiority of Dr.Kivi.

That priest of Modernism in Architecture came in ascondescendingly as a duke or a headwaiter, and when Haydenfretted. "Do you think I would get much out of seeing Europe asit is now, Maestro?" the Finnish orchid seemed amused.

He was made up to look the great artist, with bushy hair,bushy mustache, black bow tie with bushy canary-coloredwaistcoat--a squat man, full of salt herring and energy. He hatedhis titanic rivals, Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright and Neutra andSaarinen and Van der Rohe; he said "efen a gang of carpenterslike Chart-Bradbin are better dan dose swindlers dat mess on desacred name off Modarnism." He looked at Hayden not with loathingbut with such fondness as one might give to a silky Pekingese--ifit stayed out of your armchair. He said blandly, "Vy not go? Evenan American bourgeois can look on naked beauty vidout muchinjury, as my friend Sibelius iss often saying to me. But as youdon't know de t'ree t'ousand years of history, as you neffer hadaKinderstube, don't expect too much or you vill be ferrylonely and disappointet."

Afterwards, Hayden grumbled to himself. He recalled rumorsthat Dr. Kivi had no bracing Finnish blood in him at all, but wasactually a German named Hans Schmuck. But to Hayden he wasformidable. He had seen Kivi beat the local chess champion who,being named Perkins, could not conceivably rival a master whosmelled of beer and gherkins. In Denver, Hayden had heard Kivipublicly affirm his faith:

"I am not going to let my clients haf all the pingpong tablesand leetle antique furniture they vant, efen if I go broke andtake to honest farming." That Augustinian creed had set all theRocky Mountain architects debating, and enabled Kivi to charge anextra thousand dollars on every house.

But Kivi's discouragement built up in Hayden a stubbornWestern-Yankee resentment. Probably, he admitted, he was nearerto the capering Kivi than to the mulish Jess Bradbin. He vowed,"All right, Iwill go abroad! I'll learn at least onelanguage, and I'll bring back more of the genius of Rome thanthis bounding baboon Kivi could ever understand!"

The news enlivened Newlife that Hayden Chart was going abroad.Himself, he was not yet quite sure, and he did not rememberhaving told any one definitely, but in that ardent community, soproud of having transcended the village and become urban andurbane, every one knew your affairs better than you did. Hisneighbors came to the hospital to give him advice based onaffection and a superb ignorance of both Europe and Hayden. InWorld War II, some hundreds of local young people had campaignedin Italy and France, and the general city belief was now, and foranother ten years probably would be, that all through Europe"conditions" were exactly what they had been in a bombed city in1944.

"Be sure and take along plenty of soap," they urged him, "andtoothbrushes and sugar and toilet paper and aspirin and razorblades, and you better carry plenty of food. I'd advise yourtaking some nice boxes of crackers and a few cans of pork andbeans. Andhundreds of rolls of film for your camera."

"I'm not going to take a camera--if I decide to go at all,"said Hayden.

"You're--not--going--to take a--camera?" they howled."Then what are you going to Europe for?"

"Post-card photographs would be better than anything I couldtake."

"Good Lord, Hay, I shudder to think what's going to happen toa poor innocent like you among them pirates! I never been inEurope--personally--but I been reading where right inParis you got to bring your own bed sheets, even in the besthotels!"

Often in any country of Europe, months later, when he stoodadmiring show windows that were positively a Versailles of soapand toothbrushes and inconceivable millions of razor blades, hesighed to think how unknown this frontier wilderness calledEurope was to that ancient home of decorum and conservatism,America, so hoary with outdated wisdom that it could notappreciate the venturesome young barbarians of Rome andLondon.

Many among these valued neighborhood counselors begged him notto go at all. "Or if for some fool reason you feel you simply gotto, don't go making a fool of yourself blundering around alone,"they implored. "Join some nice conducted tourist party of twentyor thirty, and they'll tell you what to see and just when to seeit, and what hotels to stay at, and you'll always have some folksfrom home to visit with, wherever you are, and not go crazy withloneliness, or have to depend on natives with their queerideas!"

The chief among his guardians was Jesse Bradbin.

"I guess the Old Country was all right in its day, but now wegot the world by the tail; we got the bulge on Europe not only inbanking and university work and the soft-drink business, but inarchitecture and even in music and story-writing and all thatguff. A European guy that wants to make good in any high-classartistic racket today has got to come to America--hat in hand.But then, you and I are alike. We don't fall for the arty pose.We know that it's just another way of making a living and cashingin big--like the chain-grocery game. No, no. Come to your sensesand have a nice sensible rest, playing golf in Florida for maybecouple weeks, and get back to work. Then you'll thank me forhaving steered you away from your schoolboy notions about goingoff half-cocked to the Old Country. Yes-sir-ee! You'll thank mebig!"

Hayden lay fuming that Bradbin, after knowing him forthirty-five years--ever since his first day in this surprisingand slightly unsatisfactory world--should not know him at all,and yet should often dare to explain him to others. He reflectedthat he was like Bradbin in being industrious and in alwayspaying his bills on the second of the month, but that otherwisehe was less like Bradbin than like the clammiest, dirty-hairedLeft Bank female pseudo-painter whose only completed designs,year after year, were patterns of wet rings on smoke-dizzycafé tables.

He sighed, "And I wonder if Caprice knew me any better? Oranybody else in this town, except maybe Roxy Eldritch? The restof them think I'm a steady, contented, home-loving man ofbusiness. And I'm a tramp that only wants to see new towns andlearn to read Plato in the Greek. Or I think I am!

"Do I know myself any better than they do? I must voyage awayfrom everybody who is familiar with the shape of my nose and thecontents of my checkbook, find a world where I've never seen asoul, and so find some one who knows what I'm really like--andwho will tellme, because I'd be interested to learn!

"What I want is less to voyage in any geographical land thantravel in my own self. I may be shocked by what I find there.Maybe I'm not the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.Maybe the real captain is a foul-minded sadist and I'm his scaredcabin boy. All right! That'll be no worse than being the safe andbusy Young Mr. Chart, whom you can always count on for asubscription!"

He was, then, planning to take abroad with him something evenmore important than his folding slippers or a dependable can ofpork and beans. In accordance with his own Doctrine of RecoveredYouth, he was going to take a defiant young man who was willingto burn his own house, destroy his own city, so that he might infiery freedom see all of this world so wide.

In college days, the art of reading had given to Haydenprospects of a richer universe but, like most of his classmatesthirteen years later, he was sometimes inclined to consider booksa genteel way of getting through the desert hours betweendictating business letters and playing bridge. But he had notquite lost them; he had followed the novels of Hemingway andSteinbeck and Willa Cather, he had read at history, mostly thehistory of America since 1776, according to Van Doren, De Voto,Durant, Holbrook--scholars who believed that the purpose ofscholarship is to nourish human beings, not professors ofpedagogy.

Jesse Bradbin read only an architectural magazine which dealtpontifically with Costs and Accounting and in the newspapers readthe murder trials and the national weather reports. Jesse could,and firmly did, tell you what the temperature was yesterday inAbilene, Texas, Butte, Montana, and Trenton, New Jersey, and thecomparative snowfall in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, on this samedate in 1944, 1934, 1924 and 1870. Caprice had read only thesociety page, the fashion notes, and those same murder trials.Both of them regarded Hayden as a Francis Bacon, and he had beentempted to that thought himself till now when, in growing horror,he decided that he was an unlettered hillbilly.

"We'll repair some of that, as soon as we make the voyage andlook into who this zero, Chart, really is and whether, with hismiraculous new youth, he is worth saving!"

He leapt into an orgy of books, most of them obliginglyfetched to him by his friend, the city librarian: Walter Pater,Jacob Burckhardt, Thompson and Johnson's epicIntroduction toMedieval Europe, and the good red guidebooks of the good graymaster, Herr Baedeker. Europe came to him not as a heap ofabraded stones stenciled with dates, but as a dome filled withthe softest chanting, broken by the shout of young warriors.

Before he left the hospital for good, he was able to take afew drives. He avoided even a sight of his own house, but he wasin the gang which saw Roxanna Eldritch off for New York andEurope: Miss Roxanna in a flying, mouse-gray cloak, holding abunch of red roses, herself a red rose, a flushed and rosyAmerican missionary to the gloom of Europe. She waved to them andthen her face puckered and she was crying--not the dashing ladyjournalist, but an affectionate child.

His dreaming in the hospital seemed to him the only reality,and reality an uncomfortable dream, when he unlocked his widewhite front door and walked into the hallway with its pictorialwallpaper of beaux and ladies in victorias. He stared at theliving room: the chintz chairs, the tall white fireplace, theruby and emerald and apricot of liqueur bottles pyramided behindhis mahogany bar.

He looked at their bedroom: the chaise longue, the tapestrywallpaper, the black and silver desk. Though he had designed itall himself, it seemed to him a dream of luxury fabulous andwasteful and a little vulgar.

The whole house was a dead thing now that it was deserted byCaprice's yelling and flouncing and running up- and downstairsand telephoning violently and for hours. A dream and a languid,draining dream then was his hasty giving-away of Caprice'sclothes and her poor treasures: the silver-gilt vanity case, theonyx desk-set, her stout little ski boots, the flimsy bathingsuits that she had loved. It was a dream of a life in which hehad been busy and important and well-bedded and well-fed and hadglowingly possessed everything except friends and contentment andany reason for living: a dream, a fable, a caricature ofgrandeur.

He first awoke from dreaming when he found himself telephoningto a travel agency about sailings for England, and awoke againwhen he stood on the promenade deck of the steamer, in October,looking wonderingly down at the horde of two classmates who wereseeing him off. He tried to remember where he was going and justwhy he was going there.

He stared at the gangplank, that awning-covered bridge betweenthe vast black wall of the ship and the surly black wall of thedeckhouse. There was time; he could still go back and be asensible architect, and not go off to a hostile camp where heknew no language, where he had no friends, no way of earning aliving.

He watched the gangplank with apprehension. He saw the piercrew at the ropes, and he did not stir. And now the plank wasdrawn in, and his link to land, to America, to Newlife, to HaydenChart of Chart, Bradbin & Chart, was cut, and he was in forit--an exile. And he did not feel that he had recovered youth atall. He was a tired man; too tired, surely, to make a new life ordo anything but regret the old life that he had known as safe andprofitable.

He had seen no one whom he knew coming aboard. The intolerablylong lines of the deck planks belonged to a prison corridor. Hedrifted to his stateroom, but for all its pertness of cretonnebedcover and varnished wardrobe and a mechanical bunch offlowers, it was no place to live in; just big enough to containhim impatiently until it flung him out again, six days fromnow.

Already he knew what every exile before Dante or since has hadto learn: that in the whole world only a few neighborly streetsare interested in letting you live, and if you challengestrangers, "But I have the high purpose of exploring andconquering and colonizing my soul," they yawn, "Oh, yes? But whydo it here?"

So this was the joyous venture into the unknown that thenovelists loved to talk about!

At the head steward's window he asked for a table by himselfin the dining salon. There, he dabbled at cavalcades of horsd'oeuvres and duck reeking with orange sauce, and went up to theCorinthian Smoking Room and was just as solitary and unspeakingas he had been below. It seemed to him that his fellow passengerswere all a vast nonsense, and he could not see why any of themshould go abroad.

Except for his hospital sentence, it was the first time inyears when he had been alone, day after day, and for four days hefelt abused and more misunderstood than ever. He suddenly foundthat he was enjoying it; that he had resented being alone here onshipboard only because for years all his acquaintances hadbelieved that a man was not successful or even decent unless sixpeople an hour were exulting, "Fine day, isn't!" and sixteen weretelephoning, "Well, we got a fine day all right! May I bother youfor a couple minutes?"

It was a luxury more difficult than a great wine vintage toappreciate, to be able, hour by hour, to sit still and not try tosell himself and his charms to anybody--not even to himself. Hedecided, "I'll get something out of this trip even if I never seea cathedral but learn to sit still in a café and not feelguilty at not jumping up and rushing around to save America."

The life that had been flowing back into him became a full,sun-warmed tide; he became so sure of himself and his ability todo anything he wanted that he did not have to do anything toprove it. He spent hours walking the deck, contented with thecompanionship of beckoning waves and, as they approached land, ofthe gulls that were less birds than flashes of light.

He discovered that a ship is always the center of the enormousround of sea, the center and purpose of the universe, man'sjustification of his skinny insignificance, and he landed atSouthampton and climbed up into a compartment of the boat trainwith the holy peace of the hermit upon him.

He did most of the proper tourist things in London.

He ate roast beef and saw the guard-mounting at BuckinghamPalace and viewed the crown jewels in the Tower--he agreed thatthey really did sparkle more importantly than even a windowful ofcostume jewelry in a five-and-ten-cent store. He drank bitterbeer and admired all the tombs of all the kings in the Abbey. Heliked the rows of houses, frowning and supercilious but somberlyenduring, indifferent to publicity and the stare ofstrangers.

He supposed that he ought to be lively here where, any momenton any street, he might encounter Mr. Pickwick or DavidCopperfield or Sherlock Holmes or Sir John Falstaff or evenWinston Churchill, those triumphs of the imagination, morefabulous than Lord Beaverbrook yet more real. But incessantly heremembered how, with his classmates thirteen years ago, he hadexperimented with these same omnibuses, listened to Cockneys inthese same Whitechapel pubs, coursed through Hampstead Heath halfthe night, singing; and in contrast his solitude made himmelancholy. Was it not sacrilegious for an old tragedian ofthirty-five to thrust his lumbering gloom into the gay ghostcompany of two-and-twenty?

He did not consider himself particularly good company foranybody and, as on the steamer, he walked alone and silent. Heused none of the letters of introduction which the magnates athome had heaped on him, urging, "Now be sure and look up myfriend Bill Brown-Potts; swell guy--for an Englishman; just likeyou and me, Hay--plain as an old shoe, but a very important guyin the coke business, a good golfer with a lovely wife andkiddies."

Hayden did not feel that even the most dependableold-shoe-ishness would raise his spirits. He was comfortable inLondon, particularly well fed, but he planlessly hired a car togo out and search for a flowery England of Anne Hathawaycottages. But he was broodingly unable to see even the most iviedtower as anything but a pile of stones till, inexplicably, themiracle of recovered hope and courage transformed him.

He was on the Cornish coast, looking from the mainland at St.Michael's Mount: the castled isle, the cherubic little clouds,the gulls, the fishing boats drawn up on the flashing wet sandand, beyond them, in the sun, the sea that rolled down to Spainand Africa. Instantly, on his road to Damascus, the world so wideturned beautiful and free. It was worth taking, and it was his totake. There was no longer a pall of futility between him and thesun; he had truly recovered his youth; he was back in the magicand breathlessness of youth. He cried to himself, "Oh,letyourself be happy!"

His soul lifted above all the several Hayden Charts that hadhitherto trudged the road of indecision, dusty and self-doubting.That crustiest of taskmasters, himself, did let himself behappy.

Again he had that lift, definite as sudden music, on thesteamer to Calais when first he left the England on which hisother youth had staked out too many claims, and for the firsttime ventured on the new land that was so old beneath the towersof Eldorado.

At the American Express in Paris, there was a note fromRoxanna Eldritch of Newlife:

"Dear Hay, welcome to our instructive little continent. I'vebeen working hard, my editor seems to like my pieces explaininghow Trouville, Montreux, etc. almost as good as Colorado Sprgs.Going to stay w. old sidekicks Mr & Mrs Solly Evans ofDenver--oodles of money (inherited a railroad). They've taken ashow-place villa at Cannes rite on the shore. They know yr cousinEdgar & heard all about you & be tickled pink if youjoined house-party for few days, do come. Your friend, Roxy."

Northern France was brown and drawn-in with late autumn, andwhen he descended from his train at Cannes, it was like thesurprise of Pasadena: roses and palms and oranges and bambooafter the desert. There was a light, gay quality in the air. Itseemed to have a sparkle of its own, and seemingly no onestrolling in the streets of the old provincial town had any caremore serious than the design to have another apéritif. Andout on the Mediterranean, so ancient, so sacred, now first seenby Hayden, there were colored sails.

The Solly Evans villa was a rackety collection of terraces,yellow plaster walls, an old stone tower to which had been tackeda flimsy barracks of bedrooms, and a garden for oleanders andmammoth grape vines, all on the edge of the sea, with arock-edged inlet for a swimming pool, and airy diving boards andscarlet-cushioned lounge chairs under orange-and-black sunshades.When Hayden crossed the terrace, ushered by a butler like aChicago undertaker, he first saw his host, a thin, browned youngman in a tattered rag for bathing suit, standing out on a divingraft, bouncing a chrome-and-glass cocktail shaker.

"You're Hay, aren't you? Hi! I'm Solly!"

And on a rock bench beside the pool Hay saw Roxanna Eldritch,in a French bathing suit which had, by the most skilled hands inParis, been thoughtfully made to look twice as nude as anyAmerican bathing dress of one-half the dimensions. And when sheran to kiss him, though her kiss was a light tap on his cheek,rustic and innocent as Roxy herself had been on the trainplatform in Newlife, yet he had a dismaying urge to curl his handabout her bare waist.

"Good gracious!" thought the pious hermit.

He was introduced to fellow guests: an American miss withjolly eyes, hard mouth and hair like glass fiber, who hadsomething to do with the radio in Paris, a young Brazilian whoseemed to have no identity beyond owning a country house inSwitzerland, an Irish aviator, a young man who was somethingimportant in an American bank in Brussels but who was English,real or synthetic, an excessively gloomy but rich older Americanmanufacturer, a Spanish countess and a Swedish baron.

Among them the only one whose speech Hay could understand wasthe Swede, so feverishly did the others scream. When lunch cameout from the main house, on wheeled wagons with things in aspicand two-litre flasks of wine, the guests and the host and lean,cheery hostess went off in shrieks in which Hayden could make outonly such indigestible bits as, "Actually, it was too, tooamusing," and, "Actually, it was too unutterably foul."

And with them, as passionately pointless as any of them,chattered Roxanna Eldritch, once of Colorado.

After lunch they all had a siesta which, they said languidly,was enforced by their admirable activity in dancing and gamblingtill three in the morning. Hayden could not settle down to asiesta. He sat grousing in his bedchamber, in which the white bedand the white wardrobe doors were adorned with carved garlandsand indiscreet angels thickly gilded. He thought of Roxy as adear daughter gone regrettably mad, and then as a veryundaughterly girl with silky bare legs.

For the tennis hour, Roxy came out in a thin sweater and theshortest shorts Hayden had ever seen; and for eight-thirtydinner, she had a simple dress which, even to Hayden's eye, hadthe simplicity of a masterful Parisian dressmaker; one which, asa cub journalist and daughter of a small beet-sugar exploiter,she certainly could not afford. It was of rather violent green,and could not possibly have gone with her red hair, and did.

He contrived to segregate her from the backgammon players fora talk, and it seemed to him that her slippery new slickness wasnot borne easily, but was a little defiant and head-tossing, asthough she were saying, "I dare you to go back to that supid oldNewlife and say that I've turned fast!"

The note she had written to him had been full of thecolloquialisms of a soda fountain in Newlife, but her speech asshe lolled, neat knees showing, among scarlet cushions on thegigantic eight-place davenport, was mostly a rattling imitationof the English bright young things.

"I can see you're having a good time," he said paternally.

"I've been up to my eyebrows in the most amusing madnesses! Mynew young man is the most appallingly brilliant young Hungarianwriter. He writes plays, verses, novels, criticism, everything. Idon't think any of it has been published yet, but he'll beanother Evelyn Waugh. Actually. And the Baronessa Gabinettaccio,who isthe most beautiful and most immoralfemme inEurope. Oh,say it, Uncle Hay! But don't you think Babyhas improved over here?"

"No."

"You don't?"

"No."

"You might sugar it a little! Don't you think these people arefrightfully amusing?"

"No. And I liked you natural."

"My dear man, I am natural now! It was when I thought porridgewas something to eat that I wasn't natural. Besides! As DickyFloriat says, the post-war gen is too weary to live up to theardors of being their simple selves. . . . Oh, don't look soglum, Grampa Hay! You're so middle-class. You dislike gaiety notbecause it's immoral but because it's gay."

"I know. I've read some Oscar Wilde myself. But isn't heslightly old-fashioned now? Sixty years ago!"

Solly Evans insisted that the gambling rooms at the Casino,over at Monte Carlo, were "great fun," and Hayden went to themexpecting a cinema circus of exiled grand dukes, with broadribbons of honor across their shirt fronts, quaffing champagnefrom goblets and escorting ladies with tiaras and ermine, and,with the barbaric splendid laughter of the steppes, winning andlosing millions of roubles. He expected, as guaranteed to him byHollywood, Greek millionaires and Argentine cattle-kings andruined princesses, in a somber magnificence rather like the newD. and R. G. Depot, and caviar handed about like paper napkins,and at least one suicide, nightly, at 11:17, of a youngEnglishman of high family.

He found plenty of magnificence at the Casino, but it was amagnificence in which large plaster lady roustabouts supportedbaroque pillars, and chilly young women were depicted walkingthrough dewy meadows. Even in the inner gambling room, at theroulette tables there was not so much as one obvious duke, grandor Class B, but only faceless men in unpressed business suits andyellowing-skinned old women of a dozen nationalities, quietlyhysterical as they risked, and so often lost, another fiftycents. One of them half rose from her chair each time shewagered, clutching her baggy throat as though she were verysensibly choking herself to death here and now.

These disinterred witches were either frowsy or tooelaborately shingled and weather-sheathed; they were eithertwitchingly agitated or dreadfully still, so intent on play thatnothing else existed for them. They were like corpses as thecroupier swiftly and callously paid out or raked in the bonechips--dead men's bones.

As Roxanna looked at these derelict remittance-women sheshuddered. "I get what you mean, Hay! Yes. Let's go have awholesome banana split and then stay home and see a basketballepic on the television. I'm having a frightful vision! I'mmarried to a rich old monster over here and he dies and I'm sobored with all the other sensations that I come here to play,every evening. I live in a flat, like these old bags, and I don'tdo anything till late afternoon, when it's time to come and startgambling. Hay! Is Europe all played out?"

"No, no, no! You'd find just as dreary dope-fiends shootingcrap in New York or Nevada--I guess. There is a great, statelyEurope--I think. I want to find it, to know it, toknow!"

"Okay. I'll go back to Paris and swap my commutation ticket atthe Joujou Bar for a library card."

But Roxanna's estimable resolutions were sunk next day, whenthey came on a Sadie Lurcher Big-Name party at the HotelConcilier, on Cap Attente.

The Concilier is so fashionable and international that it isnot merely a luxury hotel--an inn, a boarding-house, though it isthat, too, no doubt, with a vulgar balance-sheet anddividends--but a purpose in life. The bath towels are nine feetlong, its food is as good as the average village inn, with moreparsley, and all the clerks speak six languages, not so much toassist the accepted guests as to keep unwanted applicants away;to snub undesirable persons like American millionaires who cannotread French menus and even earls and countesses if they have beensuspected of voting Labor.

To a small rich man like Solly Evans, when he dares to sneakin and buy a drink even in the larger and less exclusive BayeuxBar of the Concilier, the waiter says "Yes?" as if Solly'sintrusion is an astonishing mistake and, unless he tips threetimes the amount of his bill, every waiter in the place turnsinto a revolving electric refrigerator, wheeling toward him andemitting a refreshing blizzard.

Sadie Lurcher was asfin de tout as the Concilieritself. She was a stringy lady, immensely tall and virginal,whose super-ambassadorial function was introducing munitionmagnates, minor royalty and theatrical comets to one another. Shegave the most photographed luncheons in France, and nobody everquite seemed to know how she financed them. As to her origin,there were different schools. She was variously reported ashaving been born in America, Scotland, Russia and Smyrna.

She owned a modest castle above Cannes, fifty-six rooms withfourteen habitable, but, for the greater convenience of the pressphotographers, she gave her more intimate luncheons at the HotelConcilier pool, with its Petit Trianon Snack Bar, its vastrock-pool of lofty diving boards and a raft made of balsa woodand glass, and the world-renowned Picnic Plateau, up on asea-fronting cliff, where lunches were served outdoors by adiplomatic corps of waiters in wigs and gold-laced mauvetail-coats. This was to distinguish them from the guests, for thericher, more notorious, oftener-divorced and wittier a male guestwas, the more likely he was to wear, at Sadie's repasts, nothingbut shorts, sandals, a revoltingly hairy chest, and atoupée.

Today, Sadie Lurcher was giving one of her nobler luncheons onthe Plateau. Her troupe included several ladies, beautiful ortitled or rich, and among the men, all in the uniform of hairychest and the light, easy friendliness that marks the moreperfected snob, were some of the world's most notorious names: anex-king, an ex-commanding general, an English author so proud ofeverything British that he lived entirely in France, and two ofthe most titanic of the Hollywood hierarchy, freshly flown in tomake a picture in Italy: a ducal producer, and a movie actortwenty-six times as famous as the President of the United States.You may see him scowling at you from posters startlinglyencountered in back alleys in Greece or China, and his brilliantchanges from barefacedness to wearing a ferocious beard arepictured in the newspapers of thirty-nine countries.

From their humble distance Roxy looked adoringly up at thisOlympus, and snapped at Hayden, "It's all very well to talk, butactually now,actually, the international set like thathas a wonderful life!"

"I know," mused Hayden. "Yes. It was to transfer power fromthe munition-sellers and the old aristocracy to the airlines andthe movies and the radio and oil, from the eugenic to thephotogenic, that the young men died in the war and I heroicallybuilt a billion cubic feet of hutments. When I look up there atRupert Osgoswold's Hemingwayesque bosom in person, I feelrewarded. Roxy! Not so cheap!"

She looked at him irritably, and went off to get acocktail.

He was to leave for Italy. Probably Roxy would be taking hernewly excavated European glitter back to New York and become astreamlined career woman, lively and expensive and elegant,slippery as quicksilver and as hard. Himself, he would have a fewweeks in Florence and Rome and Naples, and go home. He thoughtthat now he could endure Jesse Bradbin and the querulous clientswho wanted Louis Seize redwood.

He would be missing nothing in Europe. He had not made onefriend here, and in Roxanna he had lost the one friend hehad.

At the Cannes station, in a limp dawn when the palm trees weretoo damp to clatter and the sunshine-yellow awnings of thecafés were pulled up and dripping, he said good-bye toRoxanna and Solly Evans, who were mechanical and regretful andvery sleepy.

The railway station at Florence had a fine, flaring Mussolinitouch, very spacious and inclined to marble and wood panels, butthe piazza in front of it was of a suburban drabness, and theback of the church of S. Maria Novella was a mud-coloredbareness, sullen with evening. He would not be staying here long!His taxi-driver was learning English, and was willing to make ita bi-lingual party, but as Hayden's Italian was limited tobravo, spaghetti, zabaglione and the notations on sheetmusic, this promising friendship did not get far, and he went tobed blankly at the admirable Hotel Excelsior.

But in the bright morning of late autumn he looked from hishotel and began to fall in love with a city.

He saw the Arno, in full brown tide after recent mountainrains, with old palaces along it and cypress-waving hills beyond.On one side was the tower of Bellosguardo and a fragment of theold city wall, and on the other the marvel of the church of SanMiniato, white striped with a dark green that seemed black fromafar. Hayden saw a city of ancient reticences and modern energy,with old passageways, crooked and mysterious, arched over withstone that bore carven heraldic shields.

"I like this! Maybe I'll stay out the week."

There was then living in Florence a friend and classmate ofHayden's father: a retired American automobile-manufacturer,competent engineer and man of business, aged seventy-five or so,named Samuel Dodsworth. Hayden sent a letter up to him by hand athis Villa Canterbury on Torre del Gallo Hill, and the Dodsworthchauffeur brought down a note inviting Hayden to cocktails thatafternoon.

In between, he trudged the erratic streets of Florence, sounchanged from medieval days that from a secret courtyard youexpected to see emerge a lady with peaked headdress and a gallantin satin with a falcon perched on his wrist, and he came full onthe Piazza della Signoria, where Savonarola was martyred, whererears the Palazzo Vecchio, with its heaven-high tower.

He was deeply contented as he was driven up the hill to SamuelDodsworth's.

Unlike most Italian villas, which show to the passer-by only aplastered wall flush with the street and a small door that openson the delights of garden and terrace within, the Dodsworths'Villa Canterbury, which had been built for Lord Chevanier in1880, was set back from the street, with a lawn and an ilexalley. It was a timbered manor house, half-English andhalf-Yonkers. The interior was chintz and willow plate andJacobean oak, and the chief change from his Lordship's day wasthat the ParisHerald Tribune had ousted the LondonTimes, and theYale Alumni Magazine theFortnightly Review.

Not even yet was Hayden up to an eight-thirty-dinner scheduleand, arriving at six, he was half an hour early for cocktails,which gave him a chance to study his hosts. Dodsworth was a tall,portly, gray-mustached man, given to quiet listening, and hiswife, to whom he referred as Edith, looked somewhat Italian,though Hayden thought that she might have been born in Canada orMassachusetts.

Dodsworth, in his armchair, was a largeness and a solidity; helooked as though he would not willingly move from it. He asked ofHayden, amiably, "Let's see: how long is it now since Monty--yourfather--died?"

"Ten years ago, and my mother just afterward."

"They were mighty good Americans. Did you know your fatherused to make applejack in college? Once he gave a party thatstarted at three A.M. and lasted till noon. I lost eleven dollarsand a photograph of Sarah Bernhardt, playing penny ante."

"No! Why, he was a crank, though very gentle about it, on theevils of booze and gambling!"

"Well, he ought to have known! How long you staying in Italy,Hayden?"

"I can't tell yet. I had a motor smash, and I'm taking a fewmonths off. I may stay in Florence for--for a fortnight."

"Don't stay in Italy too long--or anywhere else abroad. Itgets you. Since I was fool enough to sell the Revelation MotorCompany, Edith and I have drifted through India and China andAustria and God knows where all, and this time, we've been backin Italy for three years--course, Edith's been coming here offand on for many years. Well, we tried to go back and live in theStates, in Zenith, but we're kind of spoiled for it. Everybody isso damn busy making money there that you can't find anybody totalk with, unless you're willing to pay for it by busting a gutplaying golf. And I got to dislike servants that hate you andhate every part of their job except drawing their pay. I likehaving the girl here bring me my slippers without feeling sodoggone humiliated that she rushes out and joins the CommunistParty!

"And back home, this last time, I was bored listening to allthe men I used to know talking about hunting and fishing andbaseball and same old golf. Fishing! Hell, I used to skip down toFlorida, one time, and enjoy yanking in a mean tarpon as much asanybody, but when you hear most of those old, gray-hairedgaloots, the way they talk about catching a vest-pocket blackbass, you'd think the man was a ten-year-old brat that had justhooked his first crappie. Kind of immature, they struck me--evenfellows that could swing a big traction deal and skin a board ofdirectors that had cut their first teeth on broken bottles.

"And--when I was still in harness in Zenith, I never was theskittish kind, much. I never did like our brand of humor any toowell. I always got kind of sour when a smart banker that was agood friend of mine, nice fellow, too, but he always had to yellat you, 'Well, you old horse thief!' After the firsttwenty-thirty thousand times, I thought that got lessoriginal--and every time he saw you, he tried to tickle you. Ican get along with awful little tickling! And now I cotton tohearty humor even less than I used to.

"And then I like these hills in Tuscany and the monasteriesand villas and the variety of it--get in your car and in an houror so you're in San Gimignano, looking at those old towers.Starts your imagination working about the old wars and battlesright there where you're standing. Or you're in Siena and havelunch out in that old square there and look at that big slendertower and wonder how the devil those old fellows managed to raisethose enormous blocks of stone without any of our machinery.

"Afraid I'm not putting up any very good argument aboutchasing you back home, but I mean--that's what's so dangeroushere; you do get to like it and hesitate to go back and faceresponsibilities, and that would be bad for a young fellow likeyou. Me--I never can learn this cursed Italian language; Edithhas an awful time getting me to sayacqua fresca when Iwant a glass of water. But I do like to have food that you caneat and wine that you can drink without paying four and a halfbucks at a restaurant for a burnt steak and some fried spudsflavored with penicillin!

"Still, I do get homesick, and I never miss my class reunionin New Haven, never!

"Edith, you better shut me up! I haven't gassed this long fora year. It's having Hayden here, and get in the first crack athim and tell him to beat it, go right home and stay there--andthen go downtown and sign another two-year lease on this house.In which, Hayden, we may have Italian servants, but you bet yourlife we got first-class American central heating!"

Guests were beginning to chatter in, but before the cocktailscame, Mrs. Dodsworth led Hayden out on the terrace for the Viewwhich, by Florence custom, is advertised along with laundryequipment, garage, cost of upkeep and distance from Leland'sBar.

Although it was masked by the early darkness, Hayden wasconscious of power in the aspect of Florence below them in itsgolden basket, between this hill range of Arcetri and, faracross, the Fiesole Hill. Mrs. Dodsworth could point out thescarcely seen tower of the Bargello, Giotto's bell tower, thespire of Santa Croce while, flaunting, soaring, even morewhelming than by day in the floodlights which the mists turned towreaths of floating rose, the tower of the Palazzo Vecchiodominated the world more than any bullying skyscraper of ahundred steel-strapped stories.

As an architect, as a tongueless poet, Hayden was uplifted; asa lonely man on a voyage to find himself, he wondered if downthere, in that pattern of sunken stars, he might not find a clueto his lost highway. He was in love, and if only with a city, heknew that he could still move to the magic of love forsomething.

And then he went in to say Yes, he thought an olive in his drymartini would be fine.

The guests were most of them from the FlorentineAnglo-American Colony, which is united only in a firm avoidanceof their beloved native lands. There were a few of the scholarlyeccentrics for whom Florence has been renowned ever since Dante,but the rest were of the active militia of card players.

Of high rank among the bridge-brigade was Mrs. OrlandoWeepswell, a sixty-year-old widow, very rich. She had lived inthe handsome Villa Portogallo for twenty years now, and hadlearned forty-seven words of Italian, most of them meaning "toomuch" or "too late." She was the daughter of a country pastorand, as a girl, had in a surprised and doubtful way become thebride of a banker and shipowner who was occasionally acongressman, often a Sunday-school teacher, and always a crook.Her Florentine villa had wine-red brocaded walls andhypothetically antique chairs with tooled-leather seats, but inher bedroom, safe from the jeers of the Colonists, she kept theHon. Mr. Weepswell's favorite Morris chair.

She was the first person except the amiable Dodsworths to makeHayden feel so warmly at home that he believed he could live assecurely and as naturally in Florence as in Newlife.

When you looked at Tessie Weepswell you did not see a woman ofsixty but the glove-soft credulous girl who had been sandbaggedby the Honorable Orlando. You saw her pretty fleetness andinnocence all unchanged, and her eyes undimmed. Her voice wasstill quivery with enthusiasms about ice cream and kittens andJames Whitcomb Riley. It was just that over her face was a dustyveil of many years' weaving which, surely, she could twitch awaywhenever she chose.

"Now youmust rent a villa and live here, Mr. Chart,"she panted. "Honestly, we need you!" (One likes to hear that,especially a shy and warm-hearted man like Hayden.) "The minute Ispotted you here I said to myself, 'Now there's a man withsensitive feelings, that ain't a lotus-eater like the rest of usgilded snobs, and that would be real nice to sit and visit with!'And I'll bet you'll learn Italian like a house afire! Do you knowany yet?"

"Well, today I've picked up the Italian for 'where is?' and'veal' and 'consommé with noodles.'"

"My, that's wonderful! In one day! You're a real linguist! Buthow well do you know your Ely Culbertson?"

"Perfectly."

"Iknew you were a scholar, minute I laid eyes on you.You're invited to tea at my little shack whenever you feel theleast mite lonely."

Hayden was pounced upon then by Augusta Terby--Gus--a fine,flushed, tennis-leaping English girl of thirty, who looked like aroan horse and who was attended by a mamma who looked like asuspicious pony. Augusta believed that all American males wererich, and willing to be espoused and have some one to send outthe laundry. She invited Hayden to play tennis and have a nicecup of tea at their villa. He felt more than ever a citizen ofthis generous frontier village, the Colony, and Augusta felt, asshe had not for nearly a week now, that this time she really hadsolved her matrimonial puzzle, while Augusta's mother askedHayden how he liked London--a sign of recognition with which shefavored very few of these strange, loud American Cousins.

With these pawns there were larger chessmen on the Dodsworths'black-and-white checkered-marble music-room floor. Hayden wasprivileged to see Sir Henry Belfont, Bart., that mossiest andmost moated of British historical monuments, an outsizedonjon-tower in morning clothes, with a deerpark of eyebrows, andLady Belfont, a small and silent American heiress.

Sir Henry welcomed Hayden with what he considered absolutefolksiness:

"Ah. An American!"

"Yes."

"Ah! You are staying for some time?"

"I hope so."

"I am afraid you will find our Florentia very provincial,after your resplendent Hollywood and New York!"

Nevertheless, Sir Henry had apparently let him in.

Hayden was most taken with a Santa Claus of a man, beard andround belly and kind, discriminating eyes: Professor NathanielFriar, who had come here from Boston almost half a century ago.Friar was talking with his friend Prince Ugo Tramontana, shavenand tall and lean, the last of a fabulous but decayed Tuscanfamily. Mrs. Dodsworth whispered that these two men were the onlynear-rivals in Florence of Bernard Berenson in knowledge of earlyItalian art and love for it. They attended the Dodsworths'clinics because they liked the host and hostess, and because thefood was rich and piled high, and neither of them got very muchof it at home. They bowed to Hayden amiably, and he felt that hewould like such men as neighbors. They were the keepers of thelearning that he desired.

All this while, even when he was being bright about backhandshots with Gus Terby, he had been looking past the others at ayoung woman of twenty-seven or -eight who seemed as out of placeas Hayden himself. He thought of ivory as he noted the curiousMediterranean pale-dark hue of her oval face, of her competenthands, which would be smooth to the touch: her cheeks and browand hands smooth as a horn spoon, as a tortoise-shell box, as anivory crucifix. Her black hair was parted above the oval ivoryface; over her head was a gold-threaded ivory-colored scarf, andher dress was of pure cream-colored wool with no adornment excepta broad belt of golden fabric. There was something Latin,something royal in her, something almost holy, free from humanvulgarity and all desire except for the perfection ofsainthood.

When this paragon joined Professor Friar and Prince Ugo, withwhom she seemed to be on terms of familiarity and respect, Haydenasked Mrs. Dodsworth, "Is that girl talking to Mr. Friar anItalian? She could be aprincipessa."

"No, she's a plain Miss, and she's an American, but she doesspeak Italian almost well enough for a native. Her name is OliviaLomond--Dr. Lomond, I suppose it is. She's a professor, orassistant professor or something, in the history department atthe State University of Winnemac, of which my Sam is a trustee.That's how we happen to know her, because I imagine she looksdown on us bridge maniacs. She's doing research on somemanuscript records in the Laurentian Library for a year or so.Would you like to meet her?"

He earnestly would.

Olivia Lomond, when he talked with her, was a little blank;civil enough but not interested. Yes, she was collating someMachiavelli and Guicciardini manuscripts with early officialrecords of Florence; a dusty job, not very rewarding. Yes, shetaught at Winnemac: Early European History, especially the MiddleAges and the Renaissance in Italy.

Hayden tried, "That's a period that, just now, I'd like toknow more than anything in the world, and I'm as ignorant of itas a Colorado sheepherder. It must have so much more than justsword-and-roses romance."

She nodded and she said nothing, but her expression saidclearly enough, "Yes, of course you would be ignorant of it; you,the American businessman, the tourist!"

He was piqued, and he boasted, "Naturally, as an architect, Isuppose I could draw from memory the floor plans of theRiccardi-Medici palace."

"Oh! Oh, you're an architect? In the States?"

"Out West. Newlife. Do you know it?"

"I'm afraid not--afraid not." Nor did she seem very much towant to know it. She was merely paying a conversational rent onher cocktail. "Do you speak any Italian?"

"I'm afraid not--no." He was determined to be as lofty as thisgoddess whose ivory veins were filled with ice-cold ink.

"You should speak it."

"Why?"

"If you ask that, you answer me."

"It's not a very important commodity in Newlife. But then, youprobably don't think much of Newlife."

"How could I? It just hasn't entered my philosophy of life. Ihave no doubt it's a very friendly community, with lovely shadetrees--one of the most enterprising spots in Nebraska."

He let it go. He disliked her; perhaps, with a littleattention to it, he could hate her. She seemed indifferent notonly to him but, as she glanced about while they talked, to allmales. Only when it fell on old Professor Friar, in his shabbysack suit and ill-regimented beard, was her look kindly. She hadbartered her soul for trifles of learning that were no moreimportant, in the atomic age, than a list of Assyrian kings.Suave as ivory, passionless as ivory, Olivia Lomond made himsuddenly prize the file-rasping fussing of Mary ElizaBradbin--about bidding and rubber overshoes and sandwichfillings--as fecund and womanly.

Uninterestedly continuing her social duty, Dr. Lomond dronedat Hayden, "Are you staying here for some days?"

Astounded by his own news, he heard himself asserting, "I maystay here for some years!"

"No! Really?"

He had aroused her--to at least as much attention as she wouldgive to a donkey cart in the street, and, as she said "Really?"he had perceived that her voice was beautiful: melodious, rathergrave, suitable to a woman all of ivory.

She sounded almost half-interested with, "Are you to have anofficial position here?"

"No. No job. I shall just be studying--go back to school in mysenility. I want to master your blasted Italian speech andhistory."

But there never was anything so cold as her, "I'm sure thatwill be amusing," and she turned to talk to Augusta Terby.

He had meant it--for that moment he had. He would set up shopas a scholar; he would be an Erasmus, a Grosseteste, an AlbertusMagnus, if only toshow this intellectual snob of a ladyprofessor.

But he did not like her enough to hate her; to want to hurther. Dr. Lomond fascinated him like a rattlesnake on a puttinggreen. He kept looking at her for the rest of the cocktail hour,while she talked, seemingly on level terms, with that greatgentleman, that superior historian, Prince Ugo Tramontana. Hervoice came across the room to him like the flowing of smallwaters, not the flat, provincial quacking of so many vigorousyoung women at home. Whether or not he would attain it, Dr.Lomond was worthy of a good healthy hating.

He wouldshow her, and in her show the whole wideworld.

His good-night from Dr. Lomond was as curt as though she didnot remember ever having seen him. Her eyes were beautiful, andso unmoved, so superior to all the angry, corrupting temptationsof life, he reflected, because she did not know that there wereany temptations. He thought rudely, "I'm going to get a D Minusin her class and there is no use trying to bluff her. Shewouldn't be angry. She'd just efficiently flunk me."

But the Dodsworths so warmly invited him to return that hestill felt at home in Florence.

He planned to walk down the hill to his hotel, and consideredhimself rather heroic over a foot journey of half an hour. InNewlife a man, unless he be strengthened by carrying a golf club,has to take out his car for any distance of more than threeblocks. He found Professor Nathaniel Friar also intending towalk. Apparently to him, walking was not a new invention,startling and rather risky, but a normal means of getting places.So old-fashioned had this Bostonian become in his four decadesabroad. They jogged downhill together, looking at thelight-pricked city below and at the road lamps looping up thehill to Fiesole, miles away.

"You had an agreeable time, talking to Miss Lomond?" saidProfessor Friar.

"She seems intelligent. But a little distant."

"She's cool. Women scholars occasionally get like that.They're dedicated. Frequently they aren't certain to what they'rededicated, but clearly it can't be to such wingless objects introusers as you and I. This Lomond girl is a really competent andaccurate compiler of quite useless facts, so naturally she seemsa bit suspect to most men--and to all women. You can't askfemales to 'burn with a hard, gemlike flame' and still beobliging about waffles at midnight. Here we are. This is myplace. Do come in and see it."

"Professor" Friar, oftener known as Nat, had never been aregularly enlisted professor of anything beyond Veronese winesand the more acceptable sorts of Italian sausages, nor had heever written anything more popular than articles in journals ofart criticism so learned that just the look of the gray, closepages made your eyes ache. But he had explored every Tuscan andUmbrian church and village, and he could tell you the name anddates of every third-cousin of Domenico Ghirlandaio.

For twenty years he had lived in this five-room wing of themassive Palazzo Gilbercini, sharing the geometric gardens andtheir cypress alleys ending at coy nude statues. He had neverbeen rich, but the securities left to him by his mother, aTrenchard of Braintree, had provided him with a few casks ofwine, a great many books in eight languages, a Perugian altarcloth of 1235, half a dozen chairs, a canister of Earl Grey'sMixture tea for his friends, and one noble picture: anAnnunciation by Getto di Jacopo, a picture reverent and softlyhuman, soft blues and grays against lambent gold, the kneelingangel so exalted, the Madonna so timidly proud, her head bentover the lily in her fragile hand.

As Hayden stared at the Getto, hung against a faded Egyptianrug above a table bristly with old pipes, he began to take holdof the medieval passion for identification with the divine spiritand its longing for authority, earthly and heavenly. He drank hisvermouth and lemon juice--Nat Friar considered cocktails as hewould a griffin: exciting but not practical--and he looked at thecomfortable frowsiness of Nat and felt at home as he never hadfelt at home at home.

Nat Friar was large and fat and thick-bearded and his eyeswere cheerful. There always was pipe-ash on his vest; his rathersmall living room smelled of tobacco and brandy; and he loved tosit up all night and talk about immortality and Baron Corvo andthe Lucca Cathedral.

"Why have you lived here so long?" demanded Hayden. "Or isthat impertinent?"

"No, nothing more pertinent. In my case, it might seem to be aself-indulgent escape from reality and the dry-goods business, ofwhich my paternal grandfather was a ferocious pioneer armed witha yardstick. But I think my life has been devoted to proving thatone can be just as smugly self-righteous and still do no honestwork.

"My occupation and my vice are hoarding useless knowledge, Iknow more about the history of the Palazzo dei Consoli at Gubbiothan any other living man, and nobody cares, including myself.And I like to go on sprees of something new: biology or Sanskrit.Learning, for its own winsome, perverse self--hug it to you butkeep a club handy. It is the most entertaining of all mistresses,and the least to be trusted.

"Particularly must one avoid the superstition that there issome mystical virtue in erudition. We all feel that some day weshall be sought after by the pretty girls for our spoken Arabic,our kindness to Cousin Mimosa, or the neatness in which we keepour medicine cabinets. We shan't! These virtuous doings should becultivated for their own sake alone.

"I have of late been peeping into the history of the Baglionifamily of Perugia, a charming chronicle, all iron and goldclotted with fraternal blood and the tears of ardent youngwidows. What subject could be more beautiful and useless? Guardyour idleness. You are surrounded by barbarians armored withsobriety and punctuality and the Book of 1001 Useful Facts. Be yewatchful in sloth, lest ye be corrupted into industriousness andbecome a Public Figure, a supporter of all worthy causes, amember of the Elks Club and the Légion d'Honneur, and havefive hundred citizens enjoy your funeral--at fifty."

"I'm safe," insisted Hayden. "My partner--I'm anarchitect--thinks I'm poetically impractical. Tell me: how shallI go about learning Italian?"

"Look over the several accredited springs of Tuscan undefiled:the university, the commercial language schools, the highlyeducated decayed professors who combine Italian grammar withvoice-culture and the black-market exchange of dollars. Thenforget all of them and get a girl."

"I might!"

"I don't mean one like Miss Lomond, who would teach youDante's directions to Hell, but one who will teach youimportant things, like 'These pair of socks by favor todarn' and, 'Bring to me suddenly a plate of anchovies.'"

"Are Dante and anchovies incompatible?"

"Linguistically. I speak an Italian which would thrill thearchbishop by its accuracy; I can address a learned academy onthe Battle of Cortenuova in Italian, and they will wail withadmiration, but when I ask for a pair of shoelaces, the clerkanswers me in bad English, and wants to know whether I'm stayingin Florence overnight. . . . By the way, if you'd like, I'llinvite you to tea with Miss Lomond. You may find heradmirable."

"Well, she might introduce me to some American students morenearly my own mental age--sixteen!"

He sat in what was to become his favorite room in Florence,the bar of the Hotel Excelsior with its dark mirroring wood andits two bartenders, Enrico and Raffaele, the men in town mostworth cultivating, and he contentedly planned to stay in Florencefor a week, a month, a season. He would pray for a Biblicalmiracle: to become again as a little child, and go back toschool.

Next morning he again climbed the Torre del Gallo Hill, tohave by clear light the view he had seen in twilight enchantment.Below him he saw the bronze-red majesty of the cathedral dome,and Giotto's tower--as ivory as Olivia Lomond. Fiesole, acrossthe valley, was sharply defined on a hill silver-gray with olivetrees. Florence is a thousand years less old than Rome, yet inits medieval reds and yellows and dark passageways, it seemsolder, as in New England a moldering gingerbread mansion of 1875seems more venerable than a severe white parsonage of 1675.

"I'll do it. I'll stay. I'll hunt for Michelozzos, notmallards!" said Hayden.

Dr. Olivia Lomond was at Nat Friar's modest tea, frowning andduskily beautiful in her plain brown dress--that is, all of herwas there except her heart and soul and manners. But Hayden wasdiverted by the presence of Nat's prim and aged sweetheart, Mrs.Shaliston Baker, whose unbubbling fount had been Boston. She wasas small and quiet as a sparrow that has been discreetly rearedin the Harvard Yard, and she wore her grandmother's cameo brooch.She spoke exquisite Italian, even if her English did smack alittle of flapping codfish tails and the clatter of lead-foil inchests for China tea. She belonged to the Dante Society, whichmeets to discuss the longing of Florence to get Dante's poorexiled corpse back from stubborn Ravenna. It is an up-to-datetopic, and has been so since 1320.

Every Sunday for a fifth of a century, these reserved lovers,Ada Baker and Nat, had had tea together.

Nat gave them food as noble as the Samuel Dodsworths', andHayden guessed that he would by considerable omission in his ownmeals make up for this fedora cake, which is the Florentinespecialty, with chocolate and whipped cream on it, and for thehot American toast, the honey from Monte Rosa, the tea andblackberry jam and ginger from London.

There were peacefulness and chatter. Nat chronicled his searchfor a lost altarpiece of Guiduccio Palmerucci through lofty,wind-raked hill towns of Umbria; a tale of sleeping on stonefloors, living on bread and olives, and finding that one villagewas gaily planning to beat him to death as a tax-spy from Rome.Hayden suspected that Nat's confession of being unable to buyshoelaces in Italian had been a great and gentlemanly lie, andthat the old fraud could actually speak an Italian as colloquial,bloodthirsty and beautiful as a Neapolitan taxi-driver's.

As the talk passed to Dr. Lomond, hers was no glimpse ofromantic espionage in mountain passes at twilight, but acomplaint about the dusty-eyed, head-cracking drudgery of pawingover a thousand papers in her present investigation of thematernal source of Duke Alessandro de' Medici--the one who was sowholesomely murdered in 1537. The Duke's mother, sighed Dr.Lomond, did not seem to have been a lady of doubtful virtue. Shejust didn't have any virtue to be doubtful about.

From both of these hygienic ghouls Hayden had clues to anerudition which should not be a smart assemblage of facts toequip a man who should have been an auctioneer or a train-callerto "get a Ph.D.", nor a putting on of spangled intellectualcostumes to impress the dullards, nor a job, nor a gentlemanlyway of passing the time, but a gently ruthless, secretly panting,rival-murdering hunt for the facts which are the bones of truth;an unremitting war in which your quick and sympathetic allies aremen and women who have themselves been historic facts for fivehundred years.

Such scholarship he had never beheld in Newlife, and even inAmherst College and in his school of architecture, it had beenrare, and not considered quite well bred, nor useful for grabbinga Full Professorship.

When Jesse Bradbin went in his swift automobile on asightseeing tour, Jesse explained, "Ah, what the hell, you don'twant to learn too doggone much about all these Beauty Spots andPoints of Interest. Just give 'em the once-over and see whatthey're like and be able to say you've been there. When I'm on atower, if I can't kill five hundred miles a day, I figure I'mwasting my time, and if my wife hollers about missing thescenery, I tell her, 'Oh, we'll catch that on the wayback--maybe!'"

That philosophy of Bradbin, pompously offered at thecountry-club bar as something new and valuable, caused no riotsor harsh cries of offended dignity. "Yuh, that's so," agreed thepresident of the Ranchers and Silver National Bank.

The tyro Hayden was as moved. It was not with hostility orwith a flirtatiousness that winked to itself that he petitionedDr. Lomond, as they tramped together from Nat's down to thetramline, "I wish you'd do me the favor of having dinner with methis evening, if you are free."

"I don't know--uh--Mister--Chart? I'm not sure I can. . .."

He was sick of all his meekness. "Then you know damn well youcan! Come on!"

"But I would prefer . . ."

"If you're one of these independent females that insist onpaying their own share, I don't mind. We can go dutch."

"I don't insist on anything of the kind! I'm delighted to finda man who will buy me a dinner! I'm lucky when I'm out with somewistful young male student--so sensitive and clever--anddon't have to buyhis! Italy may be the home of gallantry,but lone lady grinds don't often get invited to dinner."

"Not even when they're beautiful?"

"Not even when they'revery beautiful!"

With that, she surprisingly smiled at him, and looked nearlyhuman.

"Where shall we go?" he asked.

"Let's see--maybe Oliviero's or the Paoli or Nandina's.Nandina's is light and bright and quiet and great food. Usually,when I don't mournfully stay at mypensione for dinner, Iget taken to one of these frantic student hang-outs, the kindthey call 'Bohemian,' which means noisy and not very clean,tables elbow-to-elbow, filled with American G.I. graduatestudents and Belgian painters and White Russians whose onlyprofession is being White Russians and English ladies whose onlyprofession is living in small villas back of other villas.They're all so poor. I hate poor people! I'm so poor myself!"

"Those--uh--Bohemian restaurants sound pretty interesting,though," confessed the tourist. "But we'll go to Nandina'stonight."

He so far reverted to the meekness which he had sworn toforswear as to chuck masculine pride and ask her to do theordering of dinner. While she rattled the menu, he was fixed onDr. Olivia Lomond; he saw that at her neck and the wrists of hersexless workaday brown dress were little edgings of fine Buranolace, somehow touching. Her hands were not small. They had theuntiring competence of a workman, of a peasant, but they wereextraordinarily smooth, and there was an anxious gesture towardfeminineness in the two small, ruby rings that betrayed herstrong fingers. And he noticed that her nails were slightlytinted now. They had not been so at the Dodsworths'. Had she putthis on for the tea-party--for him?

But his feeling that there might be ardor buried in her waskilled by her mechanical questions, neither liking him enough torejoice in his presence nor yet fearing him enough to be at allwary with him.

"I suppose you have made some progress in your plan to studyFlorence?"

"No--just wandered around, you know, walked 'round."

"Anything you've especially liked?"

"No--oh, lot of different things."

And they fell silent and looked at a family birthday party ata table across the room. There was about the family nothing ofthe faded gold of aristocracy nor yet of the "quaint andpicturesque natives" for whom the three-day tripper seeks. Theywere all volubly Italian, but in look and dress the father mighthave been a businessman of London or Glasgow or Pittsburgh. Hewas the type of tall, busy and competent engineer or salesman whowas trying to rebuild Italy after two wars and two millionforeign tourists. His wife would have seemed normal in Stockholmor Des Moines. But in their exuberant family affection they diddiffer from the couples whom Hayden knew. And the grandmotherlaughed in secret intimacy with the youngest child; themiddle-sized small boy burlesqued his bachelor uncle'sflourishing way of eating an artichoke, and the uncle laughedloudest of them all.

"Families! They seem to exist here, still," wonderedHayden.

"And they did all through Italian history. A brother wouldeither murder his brother--which, I suppose, may be one way ofshowing keen domestic interest--or else he would go out to aneighboring tower and murder a rival family there, to keep hisbrother in the Council. All Italian history is made up of layersof families."

Hayden complained, "Seems to me that at home the childrenconsider the house just a free inn and rental garage. And weolder deserters: I have two sisters and a brother who live infour different states and don't see one another twice in adecade, and I have three nephews--no, four it is now, Iguess--that I've never seen at all!"

Dr. Lomond sounded regretful, her cold independence betrayedby memory. "Sometimes I've thought I'd like to be the founder ofa family, like those grand old American women who went West in aConestoga wagon. Then, maybe, one would never be lonely."

"Ah! You get lonely here, too!"

She abruptly cloaked her wistfulness again, and said sharply,"Never! Not now, I mean."

"Didn't you a little when you first came to Europe?"

She studied her forkful of long ivory-colored strands oftagliatelli; she seemed shyly to be remembering the girlstudent that had been, and she answered with some March-morningwarmth in her voice:

"I'm afraid I was, first. I would tell myself that I was atrained traveler. Hadn't I gone way off to graduate school atColumbia, with mother's lunch, deviled-ham sandwiches andhard-boiled eggs, in a shoebox? And inEurope--oh, Icouldn't get lonely, all this to see, and I had plenty ofresources in myself; I could read and think, couldn't I? Not likegirls who had to have flattery from slobbering men all the while.Besides, I scolded myself, I had been adequately conditioned toloneliness in my first year of teaching at Winnemac; I justcorrected papers there and took long walks.

"So I surely couldn't be anything but cheerful in the panoramaof Europe. But I was lonely in Paris, I was lonely in Rome, andwhen I first came to Florence, nearly two years ago . . . I'm notimpressed by these celebrated lonely prisoners who made a pet ofa rat. I made a pet of a housefly."

"But you can't!"

"I did!"

"How could you tell . . . ?'

"There was only one in my room--winter it was, too cold forflies, but this one, really, he was the bravest, most cleverlittle fly. His name was Nicky."

"How did you know?"

"He told me so."

"Of course."

"The minute I'd come back to my room from the library and takeoff my jacket, he'd be there lighting on it--perhaps barking awelcome in some infinitesimal way. Nights, he slept on thehot-water tap, always. He never touched my breakfast till I hadfinished it; just walk on the rim of the tray and look at the potof honey. He would take walks on my hand without ticklingme--quite the most refined fly in Florence--and the only personhere that I knew well, till I met Professor Friar. Don't you callthat a loneliness of distinction--to be ecstatic over ahousefly?"

"Yes, that's big league. What happened to Nicky?"

"He passed away. From pneumonia. He is now buried, thoughwithout a tombstone, in a volume of Mirandola manuscript lettersin the Laurentian Library."

"I understand him, slightly," said Hayden. "When I first wentoff to college, there was an imitation oriental rug in my room,and because I was too scared to find one single happy thing todo, the first four-five days, I sat mooning over that rug till itoccurred to me that one of the figures in it was like a dancinggirl, young and gay, with whirling ballet skirts and goldstockings--darling, rather small face, excited and innocent.

"Her imaginary smile kept me alive all that first week incollege. The next fall, she had vanished, sold along with herrug, to some sordid flesh-dealer. But last night, here at myhotel, when I was drearily thinking that, after all, I mightdrift on to Rome, I saw her again in my bedroom rug: dancing in adifferent show now, very different costume, silly costume,feather boa and a huge muff and a lively little pillbox cap, butthere she was, cheering me again, bidding me stay here, for shewould comfort me. . . . Seventeen years later!"

"I would not have supposed you were so imaginative, Mr.Chart."

"Why not?" (A little huffily.)

"No reason. Just my stupidity. I'm a hermit, in a cell roofedover with books, looking for gallantry in thetrecento,and so I miss it when it stands right in front of my cell, Isuppose."

"What did you think I'd be like--Olivia?"

"Oh--efficient, clean, kind, devoted to your wife and childrenand your friends and your favorite daily paper--though I'm sureyou have risen from the sports page to the editorial."

"Is that a rise? Well, my wife is dead, I have no children,and only very casual friends, and my partner in architecture--atleast by preference he would not be an architect at all but asalesman and a penny-grinder: Jesse Bradbin--he's an illiterate,and yet I like him and admire him and his wife, Mary Eliza,better than anybody else in Newlife. I was as lonely as I amhere--only busier there."

"Oh."

"But I don't know that your diagnosis of me as a page withnothing printed on it except dollar signs is so far wrong. Ithink most of us are simply patterns of clothes and habits ofwork and the same way of saying good morning, invariably.'Mornin', mornin', mornin', well, how are you, this finebeautiful morning!' Jesse screams, every day, rain, shine, orsnow, and then I feel so superior to him, but I'm no better. . .. I just glare, and probably it's always the same glare. Thatmust be one of the great pleas of religion: that if a man hasn'ta precious soul behind all this unchanging blankness, then he's apretty shabby animal!

"I've always been busy; busy as a son, busy as a college brat.My specialties then were tennis (gone rusty) and history(forgotten) and draftsmanship (good). Afterwards I was busy as anarchitect. And as the husband of my popular wife . . . I don'tknow that I have any personality at all, really. (Not that youhave ever asked me about it!) Maybe I'll find a personalityhere."

"I think you're probably hard on yourself, Mr. Chart."

"No. Let's face it--as people say when they want to beunpleasant."

"But you seem to be unusually kind and fair--for aman!"

"You don't like men much?"

"Why should I? From my university president, thatback-slapping, endowment-hounding old fraud, looking for generalsand judges to whom he can give honorary degrees in return forpublicity, from him or from the head of my department, thatdyspeptic old phonograph--and he thinks Cesare Borgia should havebeen a Y.M.C.A. secretary--from them to the dumbest young man inmy classes--who's only a bit younger than me, really, and not asgood a dancer, but he says he hates being taught by a stringy oldmaid like me--oh, the whole lot of males that I know best havevery successfully combined to keep me an apologetic schoolteacherinstead of a hard-boiled scholar who would slap down my academicbetters when they're my worse."

"But isn't there--isn't there something else, some resentment,something personal . . ."

"We won't go into that!"

"I'm sorry, Olivia--honestly. It was just the intrusion of alonely pilgrim who considers you splendid and somewhatintimidating. You'll forgive me, Olivia? I'm soharmless--disgustingly so!"

"It's all right. Let's forget it--Hayden."

"Okay. Olivia, do you plan to stay very long in Italy?"

"Just as long as I can manage it, by swindling or armedrobbery."

"What is your home--I mean, what do you think of as your home?Zenith, like Mr. Dodsworth?"

"Never!"

"Where then? In America, I mean."

"Nowhere in America! My real home is anywhere, anywhere atall, on the Continent of Europe--except maybe Russia; any placewhere they drink wine instead of ice water and tomato juice, andwhere they don't consider the World's Series and madam's newvanity case the most exalted topic of conversation."

"So you're that famous scoundrel, the escapist, theexpatriate."

"Escape? Why not escape from a world of gas pumps and cannedsoup to a world where 'the wind sets in with the autumn thatblows from the region of stories'?"

"Yes. I still like Swinburne."

"Oh."

He could but grin at her slight inflation, and somethingresembling a smile warmed her face, like the sun after colddawning. She demanded, "You read poetry?"

"Not much. I used to. But there are men who do read it."

"Oh--men! Lumbering, lecherous, jocular animals! Butthey don't smell clean, like the animals; they smell of pipes andpork chops and onions and shaving cream. With their grimaces thatare supposed to delight a maiden's heart and that just give awaytheir itch for sly conquest. Men! My dear Mr. Chart! My innocentHayden!"

No. She was detestable.

No. She was little likely to be an intimate of his, he thoughtas they finished dinner. He had that chilled feeling, familiareven to so unflirtatious a man, of finding a pretty girl at aparty, finding her warm and fetching, then having her, for noevident reason, turn into a stranger.

But he still admired Olivia's assured tautness and a movingstrength in her that was fantastically different from theswishing excitements of an Art Appreciation Class. When he waswith her he felt that it would not be an effeminate hobby butsolid work for a man to stay here--for a while--and labor tounderstand the strangely flowering beauty of the Middle Ages. Hewould bathe in the magic and perilous waters of medieval history:proud-colored, hot, heroic, vicious knights in armor that hadbeen decorated by voluptuous goldsmiths, dungeons and silentconvents, exiles on Venetian galleys standing east for Cyprus. Hewas lost in an enchantment of which he did not understand eventhe vocabulary.

If only he could be guided through this wizardry by Olivia,whose hands lay still on the table, hands not thin and meanlydesirous but arrogant, ivory in every line carved to loveliness.The hollow between her thumb and forefinger was a polished curve.They were hands that could grasp and hold, and they excited himeven while he was talking prosily:

"If I stay here, I'd like to get a sort of permanent placecheaper than the big hotels. Have you any ideas?"

"Thepensione I'm living in, the Tre Corone, is allright. The furniture is simple and the food is good and--thisinterests a professional romanticist like myself--it occupies twofloors of one of the oldest Florentine houses, the PalazzoSpizzi."

To invite him, or at least permit him, to be near to her, nearto her ivory hands, her lips that were dark-red in a lovely andtragic ivory mask--that stirred him, till he reflected that shewas probably so indifferent to him that she did not care whetherhe lived next door or in Novaya Zemlya.

Nor did she mention thepensione again, as theyfinished dinner and tramped to the Spizzi. But next day he wasbusily inspecting it.

A palazzo in Italy signifies only a large house, usually ofstone, built a few hundred years ago for a very rich and verynoble family who became very rich and noble by conducting a war,with a large cut in the pillage, or by lending money to popes andkings and dukes who conducted wars. These houses are lordly,rivaled today only by movie theaters. In Florence, the PalazzoSpizzi, on the Lungarno not far from the Ponte Vecchio, is one ofthe lordliest, with granite walls in rough rustica.

There are surly, prison-barred windows on the ground floor,but on the four floors above, elegant Gothic windows with stonetracery. Along the street are bronze torch-holders, and rings fortethering the horses of knights dead these five hundred years,with a long stone bench on which once lounged the armed servantsof the magnate, waiting for commands which might mean fun ordeath, and probably both.

You go through an arched gateway into an arcaded centralcourt, with high-colored heraldic shields and one sacred frescoon the smooth stone walls. The court and its little statues oflyric fauns are dominated by a vast stone stairway. Here, theMedici hurried, and the Pazzi, Bardi, Rucellai, Cavalcanti. Oneof them, one day, walked in white carnival satin that suddenly,here on this green-molded spot, became streakily variegated withred, as the expert assassin from Forli slid in his dagger. Andover there, most briefly afterward, the assassin had his toeslightly toasted before his head was jaggedly hacked off.

In this niche of crimson and gold and crocus-colored mosaic, aSpizzi garroted his ardent bride. It is now a rented storagespace for bicycles.

Since 1550, even Florence has changed. Today, the doors alongthe arcade give on the office of a Polish refugee specialist inradiotherapy, a tearoom kept by an old English lady, anembroidery shop kept by an even older Scotch lady, and aferocious left-wing book shop kept by two young Welsh ladies whoplay piano duets and admire Jacob Epstein and drink nothing butvodka and diuretic mineral water.

You pant up the stairs to the offices of machinery agents andof buyers representing stores in Dallas, Montreal and Oslo. Thetwo floors above these constitute the Pensione Tre Corone, and upto it climbed Hayden Chart. It was a racking ascension, butHayden felt strong and fresh, his accident healed over.

In a standardpensione hallway of green rep walls, areed chair and a mummied palm, a door painted with ferociousroses was opened for him by an extremely handsome Italian youngman wearing the man-about-Florence standard uniform of wavy blackhair, cigarette, checkered brown-and-gray sports jacket and grayslacks. Hayden did not at all care for the thought of this jazzsatyr living in the house with Olivia, and he was relieved at thecoming of Mrs. Manse, the manager.

She was a small, active Italian widow who had married aBirmingham traveling salesman and lived for years in England. Shespoke English like an A.B.C. teashop waitress, a refined duchess,a Cardiff coal miner and a Tuscan peasant, all at once.

"Oh, yes, we have a very nice room with a love-ely view of theDuomo and the Santa Annunziata and Fiesole andeverythingand a private bath--ooh, just like home. But you're not English,are you?"

"I'm an American."

"Ow . . . Well, we quite like Americans here--the betterclass. You are not married?"

"No."

"But then, you're not the wild sort that would want to beentertaining--uh--people in your room, and I'm sure youwill want fullpensione."

"What is that?"

"Both luncheon and dinner here daily. It's so much moresatisfactory, you know, to have your meals here,all ofthem, and not go risking your digestion at these restaurants.Res-tau-rants! And not knowing what you're getting and thepasta stale and the veal tough and no pure Chianti, suchas we serve. Mrs. Engineer Purdy, one of our very oldest guests,often says to me, 'Signora, I simply do not understand how youcan afford to serve such love-ely pure unmixed Chianti at theshockingly low price we pay here!' And of course sheknows! So shall we say fullpensione?"

"No, I plan to take at least one meal a day out."

"It's a mistake, but of course I never even give advice to mygentlemen but it's a mistake and quite hard on me, with suchlove-ely clean rooms and serving such a variety of food and thebutter always fresh, at such shockingly low prices as you pay,but shall we say half-pensione then?"

They would say that, yes, with luncheon taken here, Haydenagreed, proud of being so businesslike in securing his firstItalian home and forgetting only to ask the amount of thoseshockingly low prices. He was dazed by the Anglo-Italian verbalhemorrhage and yet he felt secure. He had lived with Mrs. Manse,under different names and accents, in Newlife, Amherst, Denver,New York, London, and he knew that he would be cheated only thecorrect proportion.

"And when you are not able to be here forcolazione,will you kindly let me know twenty-four hours beforehand? So manygentlemen are thoughtless about that," said Mrs. Manse.

She introduced him to a bedroom, smallish, square, with blankplaster walls, which yet delighted him, for the one window wasGothic-pointed and the ceiling was groined. It had surely beenpart of some greater salon in the early palace, or perhaps of achapel, and the clean bareness of it was proper for the studiousmonk he meant to become.

The varnished yellow pine bed was narrow, not bad; there was alarge white wardrobe for clothes, a large white table for thenotes on Italian history that he would certainly be making andfor the profound books that he would certainly buy and possiblyeven read.

There was a hideous but comfortable yellow-velvet armchairwith a fiddle-shaped back, a straight chair, a pinched radiator,and a composition stone floor, with a rug beside the bed. . . .But he looked unsuccessfully for his dancing girl in the rug.

The bathroom was little larger than the ancient tub, but itwas adequate, and even contained articles which seemed to Haydensomewhat perplexing and certainly of great superfluousness. Oneof these was a bootjack. He had ridden horses in the BerkshireHills, on dude ranches, on the cheery camping journeys throughthe Rockies on which Caprice had been both at her mostcomplaining and her most recklessly gay, but he did not think itlikely that he would ride a Western pony up to the Palazzo Spizziand tether it to one of the great bronze rings below.

The place seemed to him almost voluptuous when Mrs. Manseexplained that only one bedroom in three at the Tre Corone hadits private bath.

What starred his room and filled it with light and stimulationfor the daytime was the window and the vista of towers andfourteenth-century battlements and, down below, the humbler roofsof tiles, cherry-colored, soft rose, violent crimson or paleorange, above yellow-plaster walls. A top-floor tenement downthere--it was, he learned afterwards, above a ground-floorleather shop full of gold-tooled purses and small jewelboxes--had an open loggia and a terrace with geraniums and withgoldfinches in cages, and a broad-sterned woman was hanging out ahot red shirt to dry. He would be seeing real Florentines, andnot just palace walls, spacious but decaying.

Mrs. Manse, that unlaureated mistress of psychology, knew thathe would take this room. She knew! When he did, at last, rememberto confer delicately about the price, he was so under the spellthat she overcharged him grossly: she charged him at leastone-half as much as such a cell would have cost in America.

He did not quite dare to ask how near to his own door was thatof Dr. Olivia Lomond. He found later that it was eight from his,round a corner of the matting-covered stone corridor.

All this was on the upper floor of thepensione. On thefloor below were still more bedrooms--there were twenty-eight inall--with the office, the dining room, the lounge. The diningroom was simple and white and cheerful, with white-clothed tablesfor one or two or four, each of them with coquettish napkin ringsand a tight bouquet of asters and, usually, a Chianti bottle. Theserving-table--thecredenza--had once been anover-gorgeous drawing-room table of marquetry with gilded metaledges.

The lounge must have been a great salon of the ferocious anddevoutly pious Spizzi family: lofty, vaulted, cold. Aroundsomewhat dreary damask-covered tables, displaying Italianmotoring magazines, were modern chairs artfully but unhappilydevised of twisted red-stained wood, or aged refugee chairs fromdestroyed parlors, resembling indigent gentlewomen. There was acase of novels and travel books which fleeing guests hadintelligently left behind: a French guidebook to Sicily dated1899 and such romances asLively Lassie o' London Town, byMrs. Beth Levinson Knibbs-Crochet.

In this clean shabbiness you could rest familiarly enough, andthe lounge windows looked down on the Ponte Vecchio, thatvenerable bridge of shops devoted now to sellers of artificialpearls and not to Donati defending the crossing with loudswords.

Late that afternoon, with small trunk and ill-assorted bagsand a hastily purchased new blue-silk cravat, Hayden moved intohis cell at the Tre Corone.

He met his floor maid, Perpetua, a smiling, black-eyed,powerful woman of fifty, only just slightly felonious, who wouldalso be his waitress, valet, chamberlain, social arbiter, andchief professor in the Italian tongue: a low-built peasant inblack dress and white apron who seemed to be on duty from fiveA.M. to midnight.

Shyly, not knowing how he should dress, he went down to hisfirst dinner, at eight, torisotto and boiled beef, andmet most of the Tre Corone guests. They too were in loungeclothes. In treachery to all tradition, there was no retiredBritish colonel with lady, nor even a British major or vicar.

He encountered, instead, a Hungarian widow of fifty and herdaughter, highly polylingual and undevoted to Bolsheviks, around-faced American graduate student who listened to andsometimes understood lectures on Italian art at the university,an out-of-favor Italian ex-diplomat, a Dutch baron devoted tocameos, to Americans and other novelties, an Italian lawyer withthree daughters, a soured French silk-buyer, and anItalo-American agent for documentary films, who wanted to discusstrout-fishing in Maine with Hayden.

Dr. Lomond--Olivia--sat by herself at a small table and readthe air-mail continentalTime. She looked at Hayden twicebefore she remembered him (that is what she thought he wouldthink) and she nodded and said nothing and went back to readingabout Congressman Marcantonio, the latest biography of Susan B.Anthony, murder by a balding man late at night in a rubber-bootwarehouse, revolution in the Celebes, the mortality rate insuccessor-disease affecting former confidants of Stalin,chemobiologimicrophotography in the University of Leyden, and theother brighter topics of the day. Olivia's compressed lips werehidden from him by theTime cover, portraying, in color, afabulous chain-store organizer, with a background of prunes,motorcycles, cash registers and bathing caps, and instead ofOlivia's glass-smooth cheeks or hostile, inquiring eyes, Haydenstudied only his plate of saffron-yellow rice.

Out of his plastered cell, Hayden made a cluttered andfamiliar home. It was, possibly, the first home he had ever had.In boyhood, "home" had been aggressively his father's house, andin his marriage, their three successive houses had been saturatedwith Caprice and her clamorous friends.

In a second-hand shop he bought a couple of low tables, asmall rosy armchair and a shaky set of bookshelves that had beenused for bottles. At Alinari's he got color prints of thePrimavera and Angelico'sGreat Crucifixion and thefairyland of Benozzo Gozzoli's gold and crimson courtierpilgrims.

In the book shops he went on a spree. He bought histories ofFlorence in English, English-Italian grammars and dictionaries, aCambridge history of the Renaissance, and in Italian he had bookswhich he certainly would not be able to tackle for two years:Dante and Petrarch, Manzoni's classicIPromessiSposi, which is written in hedgerows and not in lines,Machiavelli'sPrince, and a volume of Giovanni Villani'sFlorentine history--a brand-new edition, dated 1650.

He had, in fact, all of a university except the yell and thebursar's office.

His exploration of Florence, begun immediately, was notaltogether that of the enraptured and credulous tourist, forHayden Chart was an architect, a good one, not unlearned, and hesaw the purposes of arches and buttresses; his eye picked upornamental iron balconies and in apparent mere gaps betweenbuildings he detected minute streets leading to some lost squarewith a little church, an old, very old, very holy churchsheltering the tomb of a spacious Platonist who in 1492 wasdiscovering the old world as dangerously as Columbus was findingthe new.

He went graspingly at learning Italian, a tongue reputed amongthe untutored to be all melody and tra-la-la's and mobile damesand ice-cream cries, but actually so thorny with perverseirregular verbs and pronouns that have more exceptions than rulesand suffixes meaning Big, Pretty Big, Very Big, Enormously Big,Little, Delightfully Little, Nasty, or Perfectly Horrible thatmost tenderfoot students give it up, moaning, after learning howto make love and order a meal.

He looked into the official Italian Language course at theUniversity, but it was all in Italian from the first, too muchfor the halting brain of thirty-five. He tried a School ofLanguages, but he did not feel stimulated by his fellow-students:Anglo-American women who, after housekeeping in Florence for adecade, had decided that it was time to find out what they hadreally been eating all these years, or English businessmen whowanted to sell British machinery, or the aunts of AmericanEuropean Relief Program officials, all of whom interrupted thelessons to explain what they thought about Italy, with an urgencywhich indicated that they believed the natives, from dope-runnersto the President, were pantingly waiting for their verdicts.

Hayden found, through Mrs. Dodsworth, a Signora Pendola, anoldish fat widow with an umbrella and elastic-sided shoes,afflicted with bronchitis and sadness of the heart, tired, sopoor and tired, but a patient teacher, with a voice like EleonoraDuse. Hayden was fond of her and treated her as though she werehis mother. Before each lesson, down in the salon, he had thewaiter bring the Signora a cup of tea, and she announced that hewas the kindest American since that born Yankee hustler, JuliusCaesar.

Along with her instruction, he daily studied his book ofgrammar, but this seemed to be another Italian. Rarely did any ofthe words which he painfully drilled into himself from theprinted lists slip over into normal conversation.

As he learned each phrase from the Signora, Hayden tried itout on the maid, Perpetua, who, being Italian and generous, didnot find it funny when he meant to ask her to sew on a button,but gravely made it, "By favor, I pray of cook those stick on myshirtmakeress." He tried his new words in shops, in smallrestaurants. The friendly Florentines were pleased that thestranger should want to know their tongue, and he began to lovethe gently grave men, the flexibly moving women.

He had thought, at first, that the Italian women had noses toolong--from the nasal standard of American magazine-covergirls--but presently he was convinced that thesealmostlong noses were part of a medieval grace and long flying linesthat ought to be seen not in the chopped-off smart New Yorkstyles which prosperous Italian women wear today, but in afluency of trailing silk, soft green trimmed with silver and rarefurs. He noted with comfort that Olivia Lomond's nose was oneone-hundredth of an inch longer than the severe Colorado norm,and he felt that if he should ever see Roxanna Eldritch's pertsnub nose again he would consider it truncated and vulgar.

As rudely as though he were flagrantly picking her up at arailroad station, he tackled Olivia at her icy island table andinsisted that she go on a walk with him. She consentedindifferently, and as they tramped together, squeezed close bythe exigency of a two-man-wide alley, they still seemed as farapart as at thepensione. He worked hard then, as youngmen of thirty-five or eighty-five do, to convince her that he wasa devilish clever fellow. She might know all about the bellicosefamilies who once had fought from these rough towers, but hecould tell her what foundation a tower must have and how much ittapered and what the square holes in the walls were for.

She came to treat him as being almost as decent and capable ahuman being as Perpetua. She did not mock him--much.

With Olivia or by himself he looked at the great churches--OrSan Michele, Miniato, Santa Croce, Maria Novella, San Marco, theBattistero--and at the galleries till he understood how a Giottodiffered from a Spinello Aretino. He began, a little, to followthe symbolism whereby a pictured saint portrayed both the saintand a Medici, and a red star marked St. Dominic; to see that apicture in which the misdrawn toes were as long as fingers andthe children were only dwarf grown-ups could yet in the wholecomposition hold ecstasy and delight.

But he also discovered that the one place colder than his ownroom at two A. M. was any Italian church, north of Naples, at tenA. M. on a February day. The rosiest Madonna looked blue-frozenas the malicious air crept up from a crypt that had grown colder,winter by winter, for centuries. He admired the fortitude of theItalians: beardster and babies cheerful at Mass while he fledoutdoors to get warm.

And he found the smoochers--he worked out the Doctrine ofSmoochers.

Smoochers--the word was Hayden's own; first blooming ofhis Florentine poetic revelations--are those shaggy and lumberingmen who in a church or a ruined palace or a public square pop outof a vacuum, guides and sextons and loafers and plainfloor-sweepers, who with hazy but persistent firmness wreck andruin and shatter the still raptness in which you have beencontemplating a facade or, say, a Ghirlandaio by telling youthat, remarkably enough, itis a church or a Ghirlandaio.You knew it already. That is why you went there.

The English spoken by smoochers lacks not only verbs butadjectives and they good-naturedly date Simone Martini asanywhere from 1140 to 1760. But if you are sorry for them asbeing needy, you can usually persuade them to let you alone byinstantly insulting them with a fifty-lire note.

Subdivisions of the smoochers, indoors and out, includeinsistent post-card sellers, sellers of bead necklaces and offountain pens, and would-be changers of dollar bills.

In the great churches, he thought often of how Jesse Bradbinwould have snorted, "But what's thepractical use of allthis old art?" And in imaginary answer he insisted that it seemedto him improbable that one who had much contemplated Or SanMichele or a Botticelli would willingly allow himself or any oneelse to become just a file number in a bureaucracy such as Russianow is and America and Great Britain threaten to be.

Along with the English Cemetery, where rests Elizabeth BarrettBrowning, and such little-altered medieval quarters as the toyPiazzetta Elisabetta, he paid suit to modern Florence: to somedozen restaurants, to shops for silver and china and lace andgold-embossed leather, and to the county-family pleasantness ofthe Anglo-American Pharmacy, and he studied the tribal rites ofthe resident Americans at Doney's and Leland's, the tearoom bars,to which go equally the more dependable drunks and the crispAmerican girls being finished off in finishing schools, whobelieve that to see Inside Italy means to go downtown and havepastry with whipped cream.

The American Colony is divided into three parts: those whohave their cocktails at Leland's or Doney's, a small sect whohave them at home, either with firelight and old silver and abutler and many guests or, by the good tradition of Bohemianpoverty, with boxes to sit on round the kitchen stove and thedrinks mixed in a broken-nosed pitcher, and the third part, atiny and suspect group, which does not have cocktails.

Hayden himself--he had daily only an Americano, that mixtureof vermouth and kindness of which no American ever hears till hecomes to Italy.

A Florentine might have pointed out to Hayden that in defininga city of palaces and paintings and bars, he was missingnine-tenths of the living community: a post-war world of workersjobless or anxious in hospitals, small officials with meat once amonth and wine at Christmas, repressed but angry citizens hatingthe well-fed foreigners who came brightly to gloat over a FilippoLippi Madonna and never learned that a descendant of Filippo washauling garbage. But Hayden understood all of this. Even in newNewlife he had built tenements. He was more moved by povertyamong American students here.

He met American girl students whose life here was a storm offrustration, between a passion to stay in Florence andapprehension that it would keep them from going on to see therest of Italy--Rome, Milan, Turin; a passion to remain in Italyand fear that they were becoming unfitted for the ways, thefriends, back home. Half their anxieties, thought Hayden, wouldbe soothed if they only had enough money to move flexibly, and hea little despised such burghers as himself and the Dodsworths,who were so amiably and pointlessly advisory to the shabbystudents.

The most exhilarating part of his new life was in his quietroom at the Tre Corone, finding himself.

It was a secret life, a life that he hugged to him. Instudious solitude he saw winter pass like blown smoke. Half thenight he sat up trying to read medieval history in the Italian ofVillani, of Guicciardini, and meditating upon the meaning, tohimself and to his day, of that world of authority, ceremony,color, and enchanting but just slightly cockeyed fables. To resthis eyes he had, on his portable radio, Mozart from Milan.

He read on nightly, till he felt uncomfortable and wasdismayed to find that his room was slush-cold. The Florentinewinter lasts only from mid-December to March, and in that seasonthere are luminous days, but there are also jeeringly cold nightsand days together when thetramontana wind comesdevastatingly down from the Alps three pinched days at a spell,blowing pitilessly, playing rowdy with the tiles and shutters,chasing the night policemen down the streets and intobicycle-storage alcoves, marching through Hayden'snorthward-facing window as though it were a paper screen.

In thetramontana's shriek of an ice-tortured fiend,Hayden thought he could catch a stated tune: rising, rising,rising to a scream, a sullen sinking down again, and rising,rising.

By day, he could see the olive tree on a terrace below himturn altogether silver, with its sheet of leaves so lifted by thegale that he saw only the undersides, while a cypress tree bentover in twisting pain. The tempest seemed worst during the fitsof grudging sunshine when, afar, he could see the aloof andwhitened peaks of the Pistoia Mountains coldly leering at thisuncouth stranger who once had talked of "sunny Italy."

Mrs. Manse let her radiators go cold before midnight, and atone in the morning the cold in Hayden's room seemed visible, apart of the pallid walls and glistening stone floor. Cold was inhis eyeballs, in his chest, and his breath was coldly vaporous.He understood why beggars, hopeless at night on winter doorsteps,crouched themselves together.

He had had words with Mrs. Manse about an electric heater, andhad bought one for himself: a good little Italian electric stovecomposed of two sheets of glass with wires between. It glowedobedience to its scholar-master, but it could not do much morethan keep itself warm and, impatiently determined to go onreading, Hayden huddled his overcoat and scarf over his woolendressing-gown and, to crown this costume of a lone miser, he puton his polite brown hat.

His immensest luxury was a cup-size Italian aluminum stovewith sticks of Meta compound for fuel, and pulverized instantcoffee. Nearly warmed by his coffee, he thought of what he hadbeen reading: Lodovico il Moro, taking his nephew's throne inMilan, playing gaudy host and patron to religious painters anddying a flea-tortured prisoner in France. . . . Pico dellaMirandola, fairest and most febrile youth of the Renaissance,learning Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, challenging the College ofCardinals, and dying at thirty-one, to be buried over here in thecold gloom of San Marco.

It was all magic. With pleasant recognition he found himselfand his vigils inIlPenseroso when he picked upsome English poetry on a book barrow on the Piazza D'Avanzati.The night-bewitched scholar, timeless and immortal, from aColorado boomtown of 1950 or from the Florence of 1490, Hayden orCount Pico, all of them in all their shabby majesty he found ashe read Milton's "lamp at midnight hour, seen in some high lonelytower," where the hermit sought "forests and enchantments drear,where more is meant than meets the ear."

Mrs. Dodsworth examined him, woman-wise, when he went to theVilla Canterbury to play bridge.

"Have you got yourself a girl yet?"

"None in sight."

"What about Miss Lomond--thisprofessoressa?"

"She'd be interested only in Professor Santayana."

"What do you do with yourself? You can't spend all your timesightseeing."

"I tinker with Italian maps--try to find the best route toforests and enchantments drear."

"You're very young, Hayden--pleasantly so."

"Or very old, and repentant of a wasted life in whichthe only poetry I ever learned was 'Yes, we have no bananas.' Ithink I ought to tell the press services to send out a story thata man can read poetry without getting kicked out of the AthleticClub."

"I doubt that! I've been in Zenith!"

With the other guests--but privately he thought of them as"the boarders"--at the Tre Corone, he had after-dinner coffee,and they all asked "Have you seen the Bargello?" He went to NatFriar's again and found him reading an Eric Ambler thriller. Natsaid he was rather off Great Books, since the University ofChicago had taken a lease on them and was now sponsoring GreatBooks for Juveniles 7-11, Great Book neckties and Great Book BranBrainfood for Breakfast.

And he had a night-club evening with Vito Zenzero, thewavy-black-haired dancing man, nephew of Mrs. Manse, who was thepensione's desk-clerk, head waiter and entertainer ofspinsters. Vito spoke energetic English, learned from the lessrefined members of the American Expeditionary Forces, and he tookHayden to a hot spot in a thick-walled basement under an oldpalace. Hayden had noted that Olivia was blank to Vito when,looking like the best of B films in his yellow-green jacket andbrown slacks, he teetered and tittered about the dining room,encouraging the guests to buy Frascati wines.

"Why are you so cranky? Poor Vito, he flowers in thesunshine." Hayden desired to know of Olivia.

"Poor Vito flowers in manure! He sells black-market cigarettesand gets a commission on all the guests whom he coaxes to takehim to night clubs. . . ."

"Oh!"

". . . and he's seduced every girl in this district."

"That's what I said. He's a real medieval character. You likethem only in books, Olivia. If you'd been in Italy in 1400, you'dhave fled to Ireland and a nunnery."

"Oh, pooh!" she said, not very convincingly.

This evening, Hayden had, without any noticeable invitation,firmly sat down at her table for coffee. Her manner toward himstill had the persistent grayness of atramontana, andthis admirably strong-willed woman was apparently able to keep itup forever. More with a collector's curiosity than with anysympathy she asked, "What are you 'studying' now, Hayden?"

"I'm trying to get into Dante, with a trot."

"You really are naive!"

"It's you that are naive, in not understanding that I'm havingan adventure. For me it's as novel to try to wallow through Danteas it would be for you to plan a modern low-price bathroom withcompartments--plastic and stainless steel--green and silver."

"But I shouldn'tcare to plan a green bathroom--withcompartments--nor to use one, either!"

He thought about slapping her. He told himself that, with thisconceited grind, there was no merit in even a boarding-housecourtesy. He left her gruffly, and it was an astonishment to him,a week later, when she invited him to take her to the Camillo fordinner.

That brisk restaurant, across the river in the Oltrarnoquarter, on the Borgo San Jacopo with its ancient walls, is afavorite of the scores of American students in Florence, and ofstudents German, French, Swedish, Burmese. A few of them hadlearned Italian and had actually met an Italian, but most of themwere as innocently detached from the local life as were theirfinancial betters, the Colonists. They met nightly in zealouslyargumentative groups devoted to the prose of Henry Miller and thepastoral delights of Marxism, while they let down theirfettuccine noodles and drank carafes ofvino rossosciolto.

At most Florentine restaurants, eight o'clock is a charminghour in the early dawn, but at the Camillo every table is full bya quarter to eight, and by eight-fifteen, Picasso andExistentialism have already been mentioned, which means anotherregrettable night up till two-thirty, at Danny's or Rachel's"studio," and the head like a tornado in the morning and theSforzas not yet studied.

Olivia had always the art of making Hayden feel wizened anduncertain, but she had never been so authoritative as at theCamillo, where all the students recognized her, perhaps fearedher a little, and called her "Doctor" or "Professor." They wantedto know what she thought of the Delia Robbias, and she told them.. . . And with considerable comfort Hayden perceived that she hadthe three Robbias all mixed up, and that both she and theconvivial students supposed that because she knew the legal andpolitical history of the fifteenth century, she must be a soundtaster of its art.

Her insufficiency did not keep her from being confident or thestudents from noting down what she said, to be repeated fordecades afterward to the unfortunate future students of thesestudents, in far-flung crepuscular colleges on the plains or inthe hills--colleges where "far-flung" is considered a novel andforceful adjective.

When he had been permitted to take Olivia home, even thatfriendly pup Hayden had had enough, and he did not speak to heragain for a week. Then, shatteringly, came the embarrassment inthe hall.

Hayden, in respectable hat and brown topcoat, had respectablycome in from seeing an American film and he was thinking how oddit was to hear an actor from Ohio making love with Neapolitanardor. He was whistling softly and unaware, and he stopped with ajar as he came full on Olivia, a negligee lacy about her breast,carrying under her silk-draped arm the intimacies of sponge-bag,soap, towel, fresh nightgown.

She was astonishingly embarrassed about it. She trembled alittle as she quavered, "Have to use bathroom down here--somebodyin the other one that I often use--Ido have a privatebath but it's out of order.Really not accustomed toparading naked in the hall! I--oh, excuse me--Mr. Chart!"

He attacked: "What's the trouble? What bothers you so aboutthe nearness of a male lout? Why are you so sufferingly virginal,Olivia?"

"I am not!" But she was deep-flushed, and panting.

"You're abnormally so!"

"That's silly! I'm not. . . . Oh, I suppose I do getstartled-faunish, leading such a cloistral life here."

The superior Dr. Lomond was defenseless. He felt brutal andbad-mannered, but she had been so stonily lofty on their eveningat the Camillo that he was not particularly kind. And in softoriental silk she was interesting--at least.

"Olivia, my dear, you often give me good advice about notbeing an amateur scholar. I can't resist advising you to taste alittle more salty life. Come out to a night club with me. Dance.Even laugh a little. Don't be an amateur saint!"

"Perhaps I--well, I must get on with . . ."

Down the hall they heard the door of Bathroom 2 closing andthe running of water. He laughed. "Cut off on all sides! Forestfire back of us, mountain lions in front! Come sit in my roomtill that swine there has finished his dip. . . . It will beperfectly proper. I'll leave my door open. Don't be scared."

"I could not conceivably be scared by you or anybody else!"But the hot flash of blood under her Syrian skin had faded to arare paleness, and her voice was uneven. "I think I'd better waitin my own room, though, thank you."

Her look had such appeal as he would never have expected fromher--appealing, a girl, a woman--and she begged, "Please! It'skind of you, but I think Mrs. Manse still tries to convince usshe's a born Lancashire woman, with all the proprieties, and shemight not care for our dormitory chat."

"Good night, my dear. Sorry the enemy captured all the baths.Goodnight!"

He sat thinking that she was as feminine, in a betrayingcloudiness of silk, as Caprice had been; as much the forest nymphwhite in the woodland twilight. But there was something wrong;some nameless injury that she had taken. He was sorry for thelofty Dr. Lomond, and with his pity came fondness for her.

Next evening, at dinner, she looked at him with a trace ofintimacy, of pleading, yet by after-dinner-coffee time she was asself-sufficient as ever, and she was noticeably rude to hisfriend Vito Zenzero when Vito came pussycatting around to ask,Had theprofessoressa enjoyed the beautifulartichokes?

Nothing seemed to have happened, nothing did happen, andHayden was again drawn into a hobo life in the jungles of theAmerican Colony, trying to find out how innocent these InnocentsAbroad were, and why they were abroad at all.

He saw less of the American students or the Italo-Americanbusinessmen than of the golden loafers of the Colony, theDodsworth set with their Louis Seize cabinets and chauffeurs andhospitality to poor Colonists who were pitiful martyrs in nothaving chauffeurs.

Many of these Colonists were content, month on month, to go tococktail parties with amiable friends, to play a little bridge,to dine out, to read the latest books sent over from Home, tolook once a month at a gallery or a church and, all in all,unknowing all, do nothing but wait for death. Hayden was notgoing to wait for death. He had, and not long since, been throughmost of its agonies, and he was going to use every energy andinspired curiosity in him to keep himself consciously living, tofind and cherish life in his new career, in a dozen newcareers.

He believed that Americans could do that, as the FoundingFathers had. In even the most languid and habitual of theFlorentine Colonists, in even the most fluttering pansy, hediscerned American ore.

Mr. Henry James was breathless over the spectacle of Americansliving abroad and how very queer they are, in English countryhouses or Tuscan villas or flats in Rome, and how touchy theybecome as they contemplate the correctness of Europeans.

But just how queer they are, Mr. James never knew. He neversaw a radio reporter, never talked to an American Oil Companyproconsul gossiping in the Via Veneto about his native Texas.Americans are electric with curiosity, and this curiosity hasmisled foreigners and Mr. James into crediting them with aprovincial reverence which they do not possess; a reverence whichtheir ancestors got rid of along with their native costumes, onemonth after Ellis Island or after Plymouth Rock.

If a queen comes to America, crowds fill the station squares,and attendant British journalists rejoice, "You see: the AmericanCousins are as respectful to Royalty as we are."

But the Americans have read of queens since babyhood. Theywant to see one queen, once, and if another came to town nextweek, with twice as handsome a crown, she would not draw morethan two small boys and an Anglophile.

Americans want to see one movie star, one giraffe, one jetplane, one murder, but only one. They run up a skyscraper or thefame of generals and evangelists and playwrights in one week andtear them all down in an hour, and the mark of excellenceeverywhere is "under new management."

Nor are they so different when they are expatriates. Afteryears of Europe, Sam Dodsworth was unalterably midwestern in hisquick humorous glance, his scorn for social climbers, hismonotonous voice, his liking for dry cereals, his belief that ifhe met a stranger and took to him, they were friends from thathour. He had the result of the annual Yale-Princeton footballgame cabled to him, and he amused his more Italianized wife bysometimes addressing a countess as "Missus."

And the much-younger Hayden Chart, listening to the music ofancient zithers in yellow-spotted books, planning to go on to theSpice Islands and the red-enameled gates of China, was yetcynically hard about female compatriots who were too gushinglyreverent toward gray eminences or gray towers. Like Dodsworth, hethought well of American hospitals and streamlined trains and thereluctance of Democrats to behead all Republicans.

Mr. James's simple miss has become the young lady at the RitzBar, and his young American suitor, apologetic for having beenreared in the rustic innocence of Harvard instead of theByzantine courtliness of a bed-sitting-room at Oxford, has beenreplaced by the American flying major who in Africa, Arabia,China, Paris is used to being courted as the new Milord.

Hayden found that the Florentine American Colony considereditself a community sufficient and significant. The Colonists whohad been here for forty years looked down on the settlers of tenyears standing who looked down on the one-year squatters wholooked down on the newcomers of one month who were extremelylofty and informative with the one-week horrors. Altogether, theColony made up one-tenth of one per cent of the population ofFlorence.

And the claims of none of these reversed patriots so muchinterested Hayden as his own secret life.

As an Italian gentleman of Hayden's age might develop a quitenew personality among the ranches and mines of Colorado, soHayden was developing a new personality in an equally perilousItalian world of disjunctive pronouns, Gothic triforiums, and themystery of Olivia down the hall. As the mercenary Colleoni onceattacked the fortress of a girl's heart, so Hayden attacked thehistory of Colleoni and all that insane medieval jumble of warsand dynasties.

He loved this Italy precisely because it was strange to him.In his restricted cell of a bedroom here he had but little of anexile's longing for the luxury and space of his house in Newlife;for the chaise longue and the shelves of detective stories andthe heated garage, and the breakfast table, of glass and floweryironwork, on the sunporch. They were overbalanced by Florence andits memory of banners and slow deep bells, of towers and swordsand torture.

He believed that he could go beyond the futility of merelypiling up historical timber. It was easy enough for even aguidebook-tripper to learn a catalogue of the names of paintersand battles, but Hayden wanted out of his scant erudition to makea solid structure to rest in, to make a signboard that wouldpoint out on what road mankind had marched.

With Henry Adams, he tried to see the same ornament andsoaring ambition in Gothic cathedrals and Gothic hymns, the samegrace and light in Renaissance palaces and villas and sculptureand song. He sought the relationship of all his new visions tohis own profession.

In Florence, his favorite Newlife brick Georgian houses, withdelicate fanlights and wide windows which promised welcome andwreaths and Christmas candles (but strictly with movablepartitions and oil-heating and insulated roofs!), still seemedfitting and dear, though he did not want them in Italy. Andequally from the integrity of old stone walls and from Romanclassic columns he was refreshed in his belief that in no time orland have there been more imperially beautiful buildings than thetowers of Rockefeller Center, in New York.

In Newlife he had needed some unfamiliarity, some strangeness,and had needed conversation that should not always be in the sameplatitudes, so that from the first two words he could predicteverything else that the oracle was about to thunder. How greatthose needs had been he knew when he was called to thepensione office to answer the telephone, and heard a heavyAmerican masculine chuckle:

"I'll bet you'll never in the world guess who this is!"

"No, I'm afraid I can't."

"Well, try and make a guess now."

"It isn't Mr. Dodsworth?"

"No, no, no no! I ought to needle you a little and punish youfor forgetting your old friends so easy, but I'll put you out ofyour misery. It's Bill Windelbank, from Home!"

It was indeed that excellent and intellectual dentist who, asmuch as Roxanna Eldritch, had summoned him to the asphodels ofEurope. But Hayden thought, and was ashamed to be caught thinkingit, that he did not desire to see Dr. William Windelbank at all,nor his nimble lady. Would he have to introduce them to Olivia,to Nat Friar, to the Dodsworths?

He disliked his own snobbishness and disloyalty, but he didnot think he could ever stand hearing the Windelbanks explain toSir Henry Belfont, self-importantly and in detail, how barbaricItaly was in not serving flapjacks and doughnuts, and insistingupon giving Belfont'scordon bleu the recipes. Orjocularly saying to Nat Friar, "Prof, I hope you folks here don'tlet Hay put it over on you about what a highbrow he is. Home, hejust reads the comic strips and goes to bed at nine-thirty likethe rest of us, but he always was a great guy for trying to showoff and make like a deep reader--don't you now, Hay?"

But Hayden was cordial.

"Well! Thought Jean and you were only going to stay abroad forfive weeks, and here it must be over four months. Golly!"

One magic touch of Home and he was already back in itsgood-fellowship, its sterling virtues and its lack ofvocabulary.

"Yes-sir-ee, it certainly is!" boasted Windelbank. "Fourmonths, seventeen days and nine and a half hours since we sailedfrom little ole New York! But right off the bat, we startedseeing so doggone much and we like it, and I said to Jean, 'Weonly live once, and the food is a lot better and tastier inEurope than we expected, and we'll never come back here--too manymore important points of interest to cover, like Brazil and NovaScotia. So,' I said, 'let's go hog-wild and have four-five monthshere.'

"But now we've had enough--plenty. The food may be delicious,but it don't stay by you and nourish the maxillary blood supplylike a good Colorado beefsteak. So we're finishing up the towerwith two days in Florence and three in Rome, just like weoriginally planned. We did our two days in Venice, but don'tthink too much of it: real picturesque, but awful rundown andshabby. Where we've put in most of our time was Scandinavia and alovely little lake resort we found in Northern England--just likehome. And now--only two days here, Hay! What do we do?"

In terror Hayden perceived that he was expected to spend allof those two days with the Windelbanks, providing meals,transportation, interpretage, and learned artistic guidance,answering rapidly and with apparent accuracy all questions aboutthe weight of the Duomo cupola, the biographies, with dates, ofall the more important inhabitants of all tombs in all churches,and the number of members in all political parties inTuscany.

"Well, why not?" he rebuked himself. "They'd do the same forme, even if--especially if!--I didn't want them to!"

Anyway, they were too kind and loyal for him to think ofdodging them, and he trumpeted, "How about my picking you up andtaking you to dinner tonight?"

"Well now, that's real nice of you. Be glad to. Jean--you knowhow finicking and suspicious women are--she said, 'Maybe Hay'sgone and gotten in with a lot of snobs here and won't care to seeplain folks like us,' but I says to her, 'Not on your life! Iknow Hay's character like I know his bicuspids! He may talk fancyand highfalutin, but at heart he'll always be just a plain,back-slappin' Western boy, like all the rest of us!'"

As punishment for his sin of alienation, Hayden found, atdinner, that Dr. Windelbank had noticed many things that he, inthe same islands of bliss, had never marked: the routes of theParis Metro, the wages of bellboys in Belgium, the horsepower ofLondon taxicabs. The doctor was buoyant about his discoveries; hemade Hayden feel aged and juiceless, as Sam Dodsworth made himfeel credulous and boisterous and infantile.

Dinner was comfortable--and Jean Windelbank's new gray dinnerdress was excellent. Hayden was surprised to find with whatexcitement he learned from the Windelbanks, who had assiduouslycorresponded with everybody back home, the more salient items ofnews: that Mary Eliza Bradbin's new upper plate took all thewrinkles away from around her mouth, that Dr. Crittenham hadbought a "new Chevvy, a swell two-tone-color job," that BobbyTregusis, the nephew of Chan Millward's first wife's firsthusband, had a lovely job with the Cripple Creek telephonecompany.

And in Paris the Windelbanks had seen Roxanna Eldritch.

"I phoned her--she couldn't guess who it was, at first, butthen she was real glad to hear my voice--I'll bet she was; kidlike that so far away from home among these queer foreigners andall these moral pitfalls. She bought us a real nice dinner at areal Parisian restaurant that all these tourists and all neverget to hear about--kidneys, their specialty was. Personally, Inever did care too much for kidneys at home, but the way they didthem there, they was real nice.

"There was a mighty smart lady running the place. She said tome--she spoke English real good--she said, 'You're Americans,aren't you?' and I said, 'Yes--how can you tell?' and she justlaughed and she said, 'Oh, I can tell!" and then I said to her,'But I'm willing to go on record as saying that never even inAmerica have I tasted a nicer kidney!'

"Well, sir, I said to Roxy, 'I hope you're the same sweet,fresh, unspoiled young lady you always was at home, even amongall those reporters and politicians,' and she said to me, 'Dr.Bill, no girl can ever go wrong if she's been brought up tounderstand the moral standards of Colorado, and I hope I'm stillthe mountainside daisy and not the rank orchid!Yes-sir-ree!'"

(That sly little devil. I shall send her a volume ofMachiavelli! Hayden privately admired.)

But this conviviality was presently marred by rivalry. Thereis, Hayden found, something like a system of credits forsightseeing: doing a cathedral thoroughly counts, let us say,eleven points--exterior only, five; looking for not less than onesecond at every single picture in a large gallery comes tothirteen, inspecting a mountain village rarely beheld by touristsis seventeen, dining at a celebrated restaurant is six, but ifyou found it all by yourself, the credit is nine.

By this most reasonable standard for computing good works, theWindelbanks had acquired at least four times as many points ofmerit as Hayden.

They were pained by his evident sloth, and fretted out anumber of queries. Had he seen Madame Tussaud's Waxworks inLondon? In Paris, had he done Napoleon's Tomb and had fish atPrunier's? At his No's the doctor mourned, "Well, I must say!What have youdone with your time over here? How a mancould have this wonderful chance and come all the way to Englandand not see Madame Tussaud's is beyond me!"

Hayden childishly reached for equality, tried to show off,tried to show what an utterly changed and Europeanized andgenerally improved edition he had become. He spoke in Italian tothe waiter (who seemed to understand parts of what he said) butit was no go. The Windelbanks had definitely taken the lead inculture now, and they brought out a few scientific conclusionswith an air of authority.

The citizens of Bologna (where they had spent three hours)were definitely more cheerful than the citizens of Padua (twohours). Throughout France, the sale of American soft drinks(thanks to the purity of our soldiers who had served in thatuntutored land) was practically wiping out the sale of wine. InCannes (twenty-two hours) there is always rain, at all seasons ofthe year, and the Windelbanks had warned the hotel clerk therethat he was a very silly fellow to remain. He ought to see theclimate in Newlife, Colorado.

But they so far forgave Hayden as to promise to send hisaddress and telephone number here back to all the human catandogswhom they had picked up along their way and who might be arrivinghere soon: to that delightful young American couple they met inGlasgow--the husband owned a brickyard, so Hayden and he wouldhave a lot of professional interests in common, and his littlewife was such a dear little woman; she liked to read theguidebook aloud, and Hayden would enjoy them both so much, andenjoy showing them around Florence. And the splendid HollandDutchman who was so amusing about salmon-fishing in Scotland, andthe wonderful Baptist pulpit-orator from Chicago, who would enjoyshowing Hayden around Florence and explaining the Catholic Churchto him.

Hayden had not meant to call for help, but later in theevening he petitioned Olivia to help him have lunch with theWindelbanks next day. Once, he knew, she would have refused, butever since he had met her, silken and defenseless, in the hall,she had shown him a shade of pleading humility that almostslipped into obedience. She accepted, with only a few scurrilousobservations on the sort of people he seemed to know at home.

He put in the morning before lunch in helping the Windelbanksexchange their dollars and in leading them through pages 400-426of the tenth edition of Baedeker'sNorthern Italy, alongwith the compulsory daily shopping: the kodak films, the lacecollars and sweater for Jean Jr., their married daughter. Itwould not be accurate to say that they had bought a sweater forJean Jr. in every country in Europe. They had never been inAlbania.

Hayden also advised them in the daily choice of three plainand four colored post cards to send home.

"How many folks do you send souvenir cards to regularly, Hay?"nosed the doctor.

"Why, not any--regularly," admitted Hayden, and then,guiltily, "or irregularly either!"

"You don't? Why, you're missing half the fun of travel, to saynothing of the pleasure you might be bringing into people's drablives!" From a waistcoat pocket the doctor whipped out a thingilt-and-mauve notebook. "I've got the names and addresses hereof my forty-seven very closest friends, relatives and patientsthat are prompt pay, and every single week I send each of 'em acard from somewhere in Europe, always with some cheering messageor interesting piece of information--say, like total populationof Italy. And this treasure-house book, as I call it, alsocontains my birthday list for use at home, with folks' namesunder the dates of their birthdaysand weddinganniversaries. How many cards do you send out on birthdays andEaster and Christmas?"

"Maybe not as many as I ought to," said the abashed liar, whodarkly detested all standard greeting cards depicting twosparrows and an antelope, with the apostrophe, "Where'er you areor go or do, this festal day we think of you!"

"Now, Hay, you mustn't go and make the fatal error of thinkingjust because you're getting so much smarter out of all thisclassy travel, you can afford to neglect your friends. I may be agood practitioner--I'll match my bridgework againstanybody's--but even so, I bet I wouldn't getanywhere, Iwouldn't make three thousand bucks a year, without the love andloyalty of my friends.

"They're the guys that understand and support andrecommend you! Don't forget that, among all these snootyforeigners that they simply don't or won't understand what a realfriend is like! And, mind you, I don't just mean the good oldgang that you see every week at the Kiwanis or at church or thecountry-club bar, and that pay their dentist right on the dot,but the dear and tender chums of the magic bygone days, longsevered but forgotten ne'er, that if they happen to be in yourtown for a convention or on a motor tour will honor you byphoning you first thing and coming right out to the house to takepotluck with you and cheer up the wife by kidding her along.You're damn tootin'! You may find a lot of stuck-up highbrowshere, always gassing their heads off and talking so much whileguys like us prefer to remain silent and not show off ourignorance, but you're not going to find the old deep friends likewe know at home! Hm. Home! You know . . ."

Bill Windelbank was dreaming. When he spoke, all the brag andbumptiousness were for a moment gone from him, and he looked atHayden appealingly:

"You know, Jean and me are awful seasoned tourists and wealways make out like we never get homesick, not even for JeanJunior or her two babies or for the cottonwoods along the crickjust below our house. But one time, this trip, we were in a Parisjoint, real gay but high-toned, and suddenly, with no warning,the band strikes upHome on the Range--'where never isheard a discouraging word.' Well, sir, I looked at Jean and Jeanlooked at me, and suddenly I could justsee thosecottonwoods, and God, how I did long to be back there, safe! Icould have cried! And Jean--she did!"

How good they were, thought Hayden, and how kind--as theDodsworths were kind, as Sir Henry Belfont was not, as Olivia wasnot.

Olivia met them at the Baglioni roof garden for lunch, andhorror struck immediately.

Hayden could not stop Dr. Windelbank who, to Olivia's smallleering delight, referred to him as Haysy-Daisy, and whochronicled the one episode of which Hayden was most ashamed, forits cheap bullying and hysterical loss of temper: the time whenhe had threatened a tough sub-contractor with an empty revolverand the man had caved in, all two hundred and forty hairy poundsof him.

"Hay was a major in the last war, and a champ pistol shot!"crowed Dr. Windelbank.

"And Hay was also nothing but a boss draftsman in that crusadeand never heard a shot fired in anger!" glared Hayden.

But it seemed to him that Olivia looked at him almostaffectionately, and on their way back to thepensione shesaid, "I like you much better as a competent rowdy than as apolite dilettante. But how those people hated me! They are verybrave and charitable, but they feel entirely competent to tell mewhat to teach--to tell Italy and France what to teach--to tellthe bishop how to pray and God how to listen to the teaching andthe prayer."

On the northern rim of Florence, toward the mutely watchingmountains, Fiesole perches on its hilltop like a monstrous eagle,with its bell-tower for upstretched neck. It looks down on theflood plain of the Arno, which is Florence, and remembers that itwas a ponderous-walled Etruscan city twenty-five hundred yearsago, when Florence was a nameless huddle of mud huts. Up here,Boccaccio's maidens stayed the plague with song and most improperstory.

Half a mile from the Fiesole piazza, on the northern edge ofthe cliff, is the small Raspanti Inn. The window-side tables lookinto the sweetly climbing Mugnone Valley, where the river runsthrough vineyards and barley fields, past farmhouses of plaster,red-tiled and yellow-walled, with airy loggias for thesummer.

Hayden had bought a tiny Italian car--a topolino, peoplecalled it: a "little mouse." To get into it you had to hoist yourknees up to the level of your forehead, but it had a gallantmotor for hill-climbing, and it hugged the corkscrew curves ofthe Italian mountains, or went happily cantering past theenormous blue omnibuses. In it he had flashed to Arezzo, and tothe old walled town of Lucca, now that, in mid-February, springwas imminent, the grass between the olive trees was tinsel-greenand mimosa was displaying its canary-colored showers. Olivia hadgone with him once or twice, her obedience still astonishing him,and today, at the Raspanti, she was seemingly contented to bewith him.

"One of those old farmhouses down there," he said, as theyfinished their fedora cake and ordered coffee and Strega, "a man,a family, could live quietly there."

"For a while."

"For keeps!"

"If there's a good bus, so you could go to the LaurentianLibrary and the Uffizi," granted Olivia.

"A lazy spring day like this, I can't imagine going onanywhere else, not even to Egypt."

"But I'm not lazy. Industry is my one poor virtue."

"Olivia! Let's talk--really talk!"

"Must we?"

"Yes. We are two lone ships in a waste of the South Pacific,the days so empty and the nights so long under the stars. Whycan't we sail together?"

"Maybe the ships are going in opposite directions."

"Can't they stop a moment and get closer together?"

"Your poetic inquiry sounds very much like what my vulgarstudents at Winnemac would call 'propositioning me.'"

"Olivia, you say things that shock me! You chatter aboutancient Greek tarts so frankly that it's embarrassing, and yetyou seem afraid of any natural, friendly contact--like this." Hetook her hand, across the table, and she flinched. "What makesyou so abnormal?"

She said irritably, "Abnormal! My dear young man! You knownothing about me. I may have ties that are entirely unknown toyou."

"I doubt it. I look at your mail on the halltable--shamelessly. If you have some magnet, he's probablyimaginary. Like my own obsession with . . . Olivia, I never havetalked to you about my wife; haven't talked to anybody much, Iguess. I just told you she was killed in a motor accident. Theway she died is important, because sometimes I feel I murderedher by my careless driving, and start brooding. Now, I makemyself come out of it, and realize I've just been wallowing in amelodrama of regret, like a child scaring itself by drawingspiders. I'm trying, at least, to look at her death the way agood doctor would.

"I do honor her memory. She was extraordinarily plucky andquick-witted, even if she wasn't kind-hearted like those peopleyou met--the Windelbanks. (Caprice always thought they were apair of stuffed shirts, by the way, with minds that weren't somuch photographic as phonographic.) She was a bluebird. But sheonly liked the accidental things about me: my tennis andswimming, and I used to be not so bad a dancer till I got tiredof the highballs and the shrieking and the swapping of wives. Butshe never liked any of my virtues."

"Have you many?"

"Yes. I have. As you know. I'm dependable and punctual and afine designer of unfine houses. Those tedious virtues. But I alsohave a fighting conviction that men can be more thantrout-fishermen; that there must have been human beings who couldbuild San Miniato. I have much more imagination about possibleways of living than you have, of course."

"Oh!Have you!"

"Much. You tackle the Middle Ages to get them down in figures,as a job, but I take a chance on making myself ridiculous byfeeling them as life, visibly around us still. You--thiscontinual aversion of yours to the normal male . . ."

"Oh, quit it! Don't try to show off your knowledge ofpsychoanalysis as well as of Lucrezia Borgia!"

"Olivia, you've never let yourself live. Lucrezia--they didn'thate her because she did any poisoning, but because she couldhandle so many lovers. Why don't you imitate her, not just digher poor lovely bones out of their paper grave? You could beadorable, but you're nothing but an expert in pedagogyresearching in the quickest methods of teaching knitting."

"Oh, pooh!"

"There's an American girl wandering around Europe somewhere,Roxanna, a redhead, that I despair of because she's gone nativewith a gang of artistic heels. She's rackety and undisciplined,and she doesn't know whether Borgia was a duke or a suburb, andyet I give her more chance to get the sinful, glorious humanheart of Europe than you'll ever have. Oh, try living! It wasquite well thought of by Titian!"

"You are so breezy and Western and uninhibited. You are sonaive."

"You've called me that before."

"Naturally! So naive in believing that every woman ought to bea college-campus petter!" She added, with spite and something notunlike jealousy, "As your redheaded Miss Roxanna apparentlyis!"

"She is no friend of petting. She doesn't need to be! Yes, Iam Western. I won't eat my breakfast unless I can lasso it. Andyet in my attitude toward self-repressing women, I am exactlylike Nat Friar or Ugo Tramontana. We consider themmonstrosities."

"You don't know what you're talking about. You'rebabbling--oh, not so much coarse as boyish nonsense! I'd ratheryouwere coarse."

She arose, erect and angry in her blue nylon dress. He said tohimself, "She wants me to be coarse? I will be. She's so armoredthat a bowman has to try a shot at her. Let's see if she'shuman." He slipped his arm round her, his hand over her shoulder,a sweet slim curve that contented his palm.

She seemed not rigid and prudish but still with terror. Shewhimpered, like a bewildered girl shocked by a trusted oldfriend, "Oh, don't--oh, don't--oh, please!"

He had quick pity for her. He released her, and she droppedinto her chair at the table again, her face all one raddled blurof emotion, and as he sat down, she spoke tremblingly:

"Yes, there is. . . . It is true. I'm not quite natural towardany man younger than Professor Friar. But there is a reason. It'snot me. I was turned so.

"I was twenty--so young and undeveloped but so sure I waswise. I was a prodigy; I got my bachelor's degree at eighteen andmy master's at nineteen. At a big state university, this was. Iwas working for my doctor's degree and teaching a couple ofclasses and reading Professor Vintner's themes for him. I thoughtI knew all about vices and seductions and the elegant wiles ofgallants in the Middle Ages, but I had never taken time to studythem first-hand, on the U campus in this Middling Age. Thoughplenty of invitations! I knew all about Cellini but nothing aboutthe local quarterback.

"Leslie Vintner,dear Professor Vintner, my facultypreceptor. European History from 450 to 1750. Tall and gray-eyedand a little rustic in his looks, but Heavens, so slick andcosmopolitan in his talk! He was very, very learned and clever;he had studied at Montpellier and Rome and Berne and theSorbonne; he used to read Provençal poetry aloud,delightful lyrics about roses and Maytime meadows and sighinglovers. But he knew about all up-to-date diversions in modernParis, too--hesaid: vintages and baronesses and baccaratand Josephine Baker singing. . . . Of course he had a cautiouswife, with a small income of her own. Dreary and gettingplump.

"He encouraged me--so fatuously, I see now. We used to sitside by side on the greasy leatherette couch in his office, underthe reproduction of Fra Angelico saints, and smoke cigarettes anddrink tea with gin in it, and he'd tell me I was going to beanother Madame de Sévigné. I was going to be poet,scholar, court beauty, and Gabriele D'Annunzio would come backfrom his private perfumed hell to worship me.

"Leslie and I were most superior to that hustling campus. Wewere pagans, we were winged spirits from the High Renaissance,only (and honestly, he could do the most convincing repressedsob) just now his wings were being clipped by his nasty big-footwife, and only in my sweet, languorous presence could he put onhis rainbow-colored plumes.

"I really worshipped him. I was an innocent, healthy, eagerkid, so devoted, so proud, but it wasn't just lambkin love. Iwould have done murder for him, or sung over washing hisundershirts. I wrote sonnets about him that I was too humble toshow him, and I went out of my way to walk past his house (thatnasty gingerbread cake!) late at night, and if there was a partyand they were laughing, I was so jealous that my stomachquivered. I used to keep a silk-tipped French cigarette butt ofhis in my purse, and take it out and kiss it.

"So of course I fell for him completely whenever it amused himto finish up the torture. Honestly, he shouldn't have killedanything as young and loyal as I was!

"Then he got impatient. I forgot everything I had learned fromhistory--I thought he really meant his promises! I thought wewould be found out and both of us fired from the university, ofcourse, and I was all ready to live in a shack with himand do the cooking and keep chickens and love it, and then someday he would be divorced and marry me and Yale or Californiawould understand what valorous medieval souls we were and givehim a call, and we'd live in a tower of glory and . . . Youknow.

"What's worse, I suppose I girlishly trilled all this to him,and too often. He must have become pretty bored and impatient,because I certainly wasn't so anesthetic and sneering then that Ichilled demanding gentlemen like Mr. Hayden Chart--orPrince Ugo! I was recklessly passionate--panting. Poor Leslie! Hedid a magnificent job of kicking me out. He really made it allquite clear--though he must have been irritated by the way Isobbed.

"He told me that he had never thought of me as anything but asentimental fool, very bad at exact dates, very confused in myliterary style, and a perfect pest about telephoning him at home.And a skinny, ugly untouchable. The way I lavished all thepassion in me, he said, made it seem cheap.

"Even before I had quit sobbing, while I was still wiping mynose with my coarse little cotton handkerchief--it was all Icould afford but I did like it; it had such a nice rose stampedin one corner--before I had finished crying I had determined thatI would never again betray passion--or feel any. I never have.I've ruled my feelings like mutinous soldiers. And so--andnow--that frigidity has become natural. For all my life!"

She rose slowly, and he with her.

He kissed her cheek, very lightly, and sighed, "Poor darling.Dreadful!" Not till they were packed together in the topolino didhe go on: "It would not be too ridiculous to think of us asmarried. We're both lost orphans. We might seek the City of Peacetogether."

For a second he took his right hand from the steering wheel togrip hers; for a second she returned the pressure. But sheanswered resolutely:

"Hayden, I wouldn't trust myself to marry anybody. I thinkI've controlled my natural storminess, but as a wife I would betoo attentive and absorbing. And I'm ambitious; I want highacademic rank, but that I could moderate. The trouble is that ifI gave it up for marriage, I'd be ambitious then for my poor,driven husband. I'd push him into absurdly bigundertakings--influential people and get in on all the gaudiestshows. I've become a cool scholar, not bad, and that's how I wantto stay. Though if I did go native and fall for anybody--itconceivably could be you, Mr. Chart!"

"Good!"

"You're gentle, but you aren't obsequious. And you're so youngand credulous. You actually believe that Bertran de Born was agorgeous figure of living tapestry, and not Question III, Section2--if you pass him, you can teach Advanced Principles of MedievalMysticism and Chivalry to the hockey team. As I shall. That makesbeing your wife sound attractive. But I'm a dynamo; I'm not safe.Guard yourself!"

When they parted, in the hall of the Tre Corone, he kissed hercheek again. She clutched his arm, turning her face of an ivorysaint toward him with a sharp breath, and then she fled.

Spring came in with the almonds and cherries and plum treesblossoming in early March, and Olivia and Hayden wandered throughFlorence. The American Colony delightedly recognized them aspotential recruits to matrimony and to the Colony.

From Sir Henry Belfont, whom he had vaguely met at teas,Hayden had a stiff note informing him, somewhat in the manner ofa court summons, that Sir Henry had a nephew with Shell Oil who,years ago, had met Hayden in London. The baronet was pleased tocommand Hayden to luncheon, and would he care to bring some younglady of his acquaintance?

He took Olivia. In the topolino. To the disapproval of theScotch butler, who preferred a Rolls-Royce.

Sir Henry marched them through his house. Leniently, notexpecting them to appreciate such treasures, he showed off hispaintings. His Villa Satiro had started out, as a fortified manorhouse, in 1301. It had three-hundred-year-old dwarf lemon trees,and Dante slept here.

The handsomest room in the villa--it had been the bed chamberof a grand duchess--was Sir Henry's study. The walls werebookcases of English oak, with a royal ransom in folios andilluminated choir books. The ceiling was a fantasy of littlenymphs beckoning to satyrs of no strong moral character, andunder this mocking rout, at an oak desk which had belonged toWilliam of Orange, Sir Henry wrote his letters. But his deskchair had nothing of the royal touch about it. It was of thelatest ingenuity, with a sponge-rubber cushion, for while SirHenry's rear elevation was imposing, it was not suited to oakenhardness. Too many tons of cream sauces had gone to theconstruction of it.

He was a tall man and portly, and when he was surrounded bywomen who admired him, or at least listened to him, he wouldstand with his great head slightly on one side, with a fixed andsomewhat silly smile, as though he were shy of his own bulkysplendor. In his black jacket and linen collar--"no gentlemanmakes a racetrack spectacle of himself in soft coloredshirts"--Sir Henry's resemblance to the Rock of Gibraltar wouldhave been remarkable, if it had not been for his untrimmedeyebrows.

These eyebrows drooped in monumental triangles, like the manesof little lions. He had a mustache and a precise small beard aswell, but they seemed to be only drippings from the eyebrows.Sometimes, rather wistfully, he experimented with a monocle, butit was lost under an eyebrow and left him looking as nearlyfoolish as a man so much in love with his own nobility, soadmittedly representative of all that was best in the Englishcounty families, could ever look.

But his wife was an American.

But his wife was rich.

At the luncheon were the Belfonts, Hayden and Olivia, PrinceUgo Tramontana, and the Marchesa Valdarno, who discomfited thehost by snatching the conversation away from him. She was a thinscabbard in her fawn suit and tight white turban. She wasAmerican-born, swift, flashing, detestable. Rustically watchingher, Hayden comprehended the ageless elegance which RoxannaEldritch envied, but poor Roxy was an acolyte beside theMarchesa, who suavely jeered not only at America but at Parisiandrunkards, English watering-places, old Roman society, and theSadie Lurcher Riviera set, of which Valdarno was herself amember. Hayden sought the eye of Olivia, shadowed by the snowypeak of Mt. Sir Henry, and they mutely confided that they didn'tlike this.

They said practically nothing at lunch. Prince Ugo--fine,lean, courteous--said only that Dr. Lomond was much honored atthe Laurentian Library. Olivia glowed, and Sir Henry looked ather for the first time. The Marchesa Valdarno also looked ather--with contempt.

Throughout luncheon, Hayden had his usual discomfort over theEuropean trick of speaking in four languages at once, switchingfrom English to Italian in the one same sentence, with the nextin French. He longed for the roar and whattameaning of JesseBradbin.

But the soup was good.

But after lunch, as they rode home in the humble topolino,Olivia yelled with unacademic vigor that she hated Sir Henry andhis mob and wanted never to meet any of them again.

"I would like to see him again, though," said Hayden, "becauseI'd like to get to the bottom of why so many Americans andwell-heeled Britishers live permanently in Italy. Most of theItalians don't much like us. They consider our drinkers too wetand our hermits too chilly and our outmarrying girls, like thatValdarno woman, disloyal to their husbands--some of them, I mean.Yet we cling to this country. Why? I'll go to the Villa Satiroagain, if I get invited, which is not too likely. I don't thinkBelfont considers me one of the more tinkling talkers."

"Me neither. And no more villa. It's too Satiro!"

At night he was conscious of Olivia, down the hall, andwondered whether he would again meet her in feminine mufti, freeof her hard uniform of professorial brown serge. But their nextjaunt was considerably less abandoned. In the fashion of Newlifein his father's era, he took her to church; not to a resoundingRoman basilica but to a home-town church, a Main-Street church,in English Gothic but flavored, too, with prairie wild roses.

The St. James American Episcopal Church in Florence has nomore Episcopalians than Methodists or Unitarians or plainindifferentists. In the bright stone chancel, the American flaghangs along with the Italian, and for an hour every Sundaymorning even the Colonists who seem almost alienated from Homeare betrayed into being American again. Social climbing ishalted, and girl students kneel beside florid gentlemen who havesuperbly been in steel.

Most of the Colonists are given to complaining at dinnerparties that America has gone to hell, along with lazy andoverpaid servants, impertinent children, tasteless food andfiendish labor leaders who will soon be purging all responsiblecitizens. Yet at St. James's, as they unite in the old hymns,there rises in them something primitive.

Colonists who have been asserting that they would as soon dieas go back to the States and see executives being obsequious tobellboys and subway conductors and their own cooks, now hearthrough the music at St. James's the heavy shoes on PlymouthRock, the barefoot Confederates marching in the wintry Tennesseemountains, the plodding of moccasins on the Oregon Trail. Intheir flippant unfaith to their lean and bitter mother, America,there is yet more faith than in their zest for Europe, theiropulent mistress.

Hayden came in Sabbatically double-breasted blue, with a blackHomburg hat, and he was proud of Olivia's blue silk and herresolutely white gloves and the unexpected prayer-book ofcelluloid cover painted with forget-me-nots which she must haveborrowed at thepensione. Through service, he was contentto see how properly she rose and knelt. He remembered the spiresof Newlife, and was faintly lonely for home. He knew then that hewas unalterably an American; he knew what a special and mysticalexperience it is, for the American never really emigrates butonly travels; perhaps travels for two or three generations but atthe end is still marked with the gaunt image of Tecumseh.

After church, they had lunch amid the fine linen of the HotelExcelsior, and Hayden boasted:

"You did well in church today--for a heathen. I am a correctEpiscopalian, and my firm built Holy Cross Pro-cathedral."

"Not me! I was brought up a Primitive Baptist. 'It's theold-time religion!' How American I still am, even when I pretendto have covered it over with Venetian velvet!"

"It's a perfect spring day. Let's wander all afternoon."

"Not me. I have a lot to read," said the sturdy girl fromProfessor Vintner's class.

So they wandered all afternoon, through the spring-emblazonedcity, through dark courtyards lighted up equally by gold-deckedshrines to the Virgin and by plaid work-shirts hung up to drybefore a fifth-story window, past the Cerchi tower, among theSunday crowd oozing along the Arno, with a Punch and Judy show inthe Piazza Ognissanti. For tea they went not to a bar favored bythe Colony but were so bold as to sit out in the Square of theRepublic, in front of Gilli's.

They climbed up the winding driveway of the Viale dei Colliand felt not the grandeur of Florence but its simplepleasantness, under the trees, like the pleasantness of Newlifein June. For dinner, Olivia guided him to a little basementtrattoria.

They went down slippery marble stairs into a cellar with smalltables of transparent oilcloth over green-and-white table-covers.On the rough walls were very bad landscapes with which artstudents had paid their board-bills: landscapes with cow andriver and a mountain composed of cake icing. The one waiter wasguiltless of a white jacket; he wore a sweater and screamedamiably at the patrons and sometimes sat down with them. The roomwas full of cheerfulness: clerks and shopkeepers and soldierswhirled their strings of spaghetti and acrobatically ate friedpotatoes with their knives.

Olivia was an intimate of the place. The waiter beamed and ledthem through a more solemn dining room where, with whitetablecloths, dined the few tourists, on to the delights of thekitchen, and that was a kitchen out of a Christmas story.

The floor was of red tiles and the charcoal broiler lighted upa string of copper stewpans. It glared on the swarthy face of thefat woman cook so that she looked like a lady fiend. But besidethe broiler was a modern electric range, crimson enamel and coolsteel. On a table, ready to be cooked, were all the varieties ofpasta: fattagliatelli noodles, thin and writhingtaglierini, tortellini like snug little white doughnuts,and the sage green oflasagne verdi, made withspinach.

On benches at the long central table five hardy taxi-driverswere dredging their grassy soup, and they looked up to saluteOlivia with"Ecco! La Dottoressa!"

"It's an honor to be allowed to eat in the kitchen," Oliviaexplained, as they took places on a bench. "I ate in the outsideroom for a long while before the Signora would let me join themhere. Now I'm part of the family, and you will be."

"I appreciate it." And indeed when the drivers nodded to himas though he were not a Foreigner and a Fare but a man, he feltmore honored than in any toleration by Sir Henry Belfont. Oliviawas hearty with a plate of giant ribbedmaccheroni withmeaty Bolognese sauce, and they drank red table wine poured outof what looked like a Newlife pop bottle.

Roaring with friendliness, the drivers wanted to know howstood the Dottoressa, and had she dug out of the library anyscandals more recent than 1600? She fenced with them incolloquial Italian, and they cackled. Though the sharp careerwoman is new in Italy, there has always been a tradition of theLearned Lady, like Camilla Rucellai, like Romola, a tradition ofhonor, and Olivia seemed to wear the laurel crown with ease.Hayden studied her with fond pride. Was he movingly in love withher, a thing to last? With a throb, with sorrow for theshallowness of his tribute to Caprice, he wondered if his hearthad forgotten her complete, and her faded little ghost waswandering now forlorn in the Colorado winter, shelterless.

The restaurant was conducted by a family of whom thegrandmother was chieftain and chef, the youngish father was theoutside waiter in the sweater, his wife was assistant chef, theirtwo small sons were dishwashers and bus boys, and the baby, withits dark eyes and humorous mouth, was the most expansivecustomer. All evening, it seemed to Hayden, that baby was eating,eating everything, ham and breast of chicken and peas cooked withbacon and rather more red wine than strictly modern mothers giveto the hygienic infants of America.

The baby and Olivia found each other delightful and slightlyfunny. They winked at each other, and the baby went to sleep withits head against Olivia's arm. She flushed then; her lips weretight and she breathed quickly. Hayden could not tell whetherthis contact with the flesh of a baby was gratifying ordistressing. She fell altogether silent and stared at the babywith a sun-and-shadow alternation of frown and tenderness. Heguessed that she was thinking of Professor Leslie Vintner.

When the drivers had gone and the kitchen was somewhat morequiet, Olivia said carelessly, "I'll have to be leaving Florencethis coming week."

"What?"

"Oh, only for three-four days, and not till Tuesday. I have togo to Venice, which it happens I have never seen, to look up somerecords in the State Archives."

"I've never been in Venice, either. I'll drive you upthere."

"Oh, I don't think we could do that. No, I'm quite sure wecouldn't. Thank you, though."

"Who's going to mind? It would be only too innocent. Who wouldbe shocked? Mrs. Manse?"

"I would be!"

"What?"

"I mean . . . We've had a lovely day, and I've enjoyed it, andall the more reason why I must remember my resolution not to bedominated by any male."

"Who's trying to dominate you? Just friends."

"Not even too lively a friendship with a man, if it couldpossibly grow into too much importance. I've been slack in regardto you. Spring! I must put on my armor again. There! I have!You're just an amiable gentleman who lives in mypensione."

He was irritated to ruthlessness by her undependability. Shewas being a tease, flirtatious and bogus, encouraging him andthen drawing back. He expected that of a campus hoyden, not of adevoted scholar. She could, it seemed, be just as phony asCaprice--in the opposite direction: the Caprice who pretended,like a man, to be only a breezy companion, uninterested inlove-making, when she was thinking of nothing else.

"So," he said treacherously, "we're just amiable acquaintancesagain; very polite."

"That seems to be it."

"With no silly sentiment between us."

"None whatever."

"Two careless laddy-boys together. So wecan go toVenice, without any compromise!"

"Oh, stop it!"

"I won't argue, but that's the logic of it."

He thought she looked disappointed when he talked vigorously,and only, of the Dodsworths' new car. They returned to the TreCorone rather silently and, for once, he accompanied her down thehall to her room and, as she opened the door, for the first timehe saw the interior.

It was decidedly not dusty and doctoral. Her bed was coveredwith a fluffy white spread and over it was a cast of smilinglittle angels. He seized her hand, and urged, "Olivia! Let's bothgo to Venice! Let's not be skittish ingénues. We don'thave too many live joys. Let's discover the wonder of Venicetogether!"

"But if we should go--oh then,please!"

Olivia was youthful in white linen. "For a scholar, she spendsquite a lot on clothes," he reflected. Like a girl back home, shewas not wearing stockings, and there was a glow of bare ivoryknees as she tucked herself into the topolino.

"Is it possible that she has chucked her aloofness, that shelikes me a good deal?" he wondered.

They were close together in the tiny car on this, their firstmammoth excursion. Wisteria was beginning to paint the walls, themimosa bush was in yellow cataracts, and the daffodils were likeshy English visitors. The Tuscan spring was sweet with the smellof plowed fields among the vine rows, where gentle oxen moved inleisure, great white oxen against the brown earth, and theliberated lovers were bound for Venice, city to them enchantedbut unknown. They sang together as they crawled, spiraled, spedup on the road across the Apennines that is the highway toBologna and Venice.

After the Futa Pass, before the high notch of Raticosa, therewas a long upland ridge with valleys like unknown kingdomscastle-starred below them. It was flying. The sheep pastures, thepocket vineyards, the dumpy plaster farmhouses, and lonemonasteries which were high above the valley floor and yethundreds of feet below the car could be comfortably reached, saidHayden, by a jump and then a good deal of quiet falling. It was atwisted trail for eagles.

Olivia looked out of the car and directly down. "I'm not muchused to mountain driving. Are you good at it?"

"Used to it, at least."

"You sound confident. Then I am."

Before Raticosa they were in a mountain-top barren of stuntedpine and heather. Up here, it was still late winter, and patchesof sandy snow were dark along the road as they went back in timetwo months behind Florence. The higher peaks beyond them weresolid snow.

"This must be frightening, in January. Like your Rockies. I'ma plodding plainsman and marsh-jumper. A lot of my childhood inSouthern New Jersey," said Olivia.

The Italians have been admirable road-engineers sincecenturies before Julius Caesar, and the car came down fast butsecurely on the corkscrew road that drops from the pass toBologna in its valley, brisk red Bologna with its arcades. Thenit was all flat land across Emilia and the Veneto, and eighthours from Florence, they left the car at the Piazzale Roma andmagically took a gondola up the canals of Venice, past palaceswhose doorsteps were washed by the sea channels.

Venice, on the map, resembles one large island (which isreally a group of small ones) curved like a heavy thumb and hand,grasping at the head of another island like a timid animal withagitated pointed paws. When Hayden pointed this out, rattling amap in the breeze, Olivia cried, "An architect does get to havean eye! My poet!"

For propriety, they stayed at two differentpensioninear the Piazza Morosini. They had cocktails at the PalazzoGritti, the most luxurious hotel in Italy, and dined at theColombo on tiny shrimps fresh from the Adriatic, listening to theVenetian citizens standing at the wine counter and peacefullyquarreling. Then they walked through Venice till midnight,getting lost and found and more lost than ever among streets thatchanged their names every two blocks and after eight or ten,ended slap in a courtyard with an ancient wellhead and no exit orelse crept up on a bridge over a canal and down under the bulk ofa palace, in darkness, to emerge on an astonishing square, vast,empty, palace-walled. They saw arches reflected in the smallinterior canals and the more exuberant illumination mirroredflickeringly in the wide Grand Canal, caught through alleys thatwere only three-foot slits between six-story warrens.

Here is the only city without wheeled traffic, the only citydedicated to human beings and not to dictatorial automobiles, andover all of it is unreality. They walked with stilled reverencethrough the small crowds, free of the horrors of motorcycles andof the bicycles that elsewhere in Italy stalk pedestrians andbring them down.

Venice is not a city. It is one colossal palace on a low rockin the sea. These are not squares and courtyards but rooflesshalls, and if the stone is worn and the plaster blotched, thereis gaudy Renaissance history in balconies and Gothic windows.

These are not streets but corridors of the palace, and thesebright bazaars, heaped with figured satin and ivory triptychs andspun iridescent glass, are not shops but the ancient loot of thedoges, and this is not stone pavement but the palace floor,polished by centuries of feet that first skipped here, thenstrode, then shuffled till they were borne to the funeral gondolaby sturdier feet; a floor so polished thus that by night lightall the granite roughnesses vanish in an even glow.

All round the palace a breeze flickers in from Ragusa andAlbania and the Adriatic isles. Fishing smacks with coloredlateen sails come in with cargoes of devilfish, and disdainfulsteamers fresh from Egypt and its musky airs, and the gondolas,with their small prow lights, lurch over the Grand Canal, thegondoliers swinging on the poop.

Here and not elsewhere live Neptune and his daughters, whosehair is spray. They were visible that night to Hayden and hisgirl, pacing through hollow-sounding piazzas, their arms roundeach other. He had little to say but "To find all this withyou!" and reluctantly he kissed her good night at herdoor.

By working late, Olivia finished her research the next day,and they dined in grandeur at the Gritti and again walked thenight half out. All the morning after they spent in the PiazzaSan Marco.

They sat, in an idleness and contentment so profound that theyamounted to activity, at a table outside the Lavena, and watchedthe operetta of the crowd: the tourists feeding the pigeonswhich, at the bang of the clock struck by the bronze giants, rosetogether in a tide of wings; the smoochers--sellers of post cardsand coral necklaces and the guide with the red scarf who wasalways saying hopefully, "Guide? Me spik gud English."

An American destroyer was in harbor, and the crew and officershad flooded ashore, each with a camera, from executive officer tomess boy. San Marco cathedral must that day have exceeded itsquota of being photographed fifty times an hour.

Of these rangy American boys, with the freshness of SalemHarbor or the Iowa hills under their salt glaze, Hayden wasproud. "Look at them! And next week, in Greece or Smyrna orSpain! They've brought back the tradition of the clipper dayswhen Yankee faces (including a great-something-grandfather ofmine) were seen in every port of China and Africa and the SpiceIslands!"

He was incredibly contented with the friendly presence ofOlivia, the magnificence of the hour and place, where he couldsee Byzantine and Gothic and Renaissance all together, in atremendous harmony. He thought that Olivia looked almost like afond wife when he passed on to her, as a lover's gift, all thearchitectural lore he was harvesting.

He dutifully inquired, "But do you think we'd better bestarting? It's going to cloud over."

"Not yet. I've forgotten the responsible Dr. Lomond. Let'sdrown in this sun while it lasts. Americans are always sorestless to be off; they follow some mental timetable thatthey'll probably take with them to Heaven, to the considerableannoyance of the timeless angels, who don't mind a bit if you'rea couple of thousand years late for choir practice!"

Her complaint was generously illustrated by an Americantourist couple at a table near.

They were people of sixty, and prosperous; they looked asthough they had retired from the woes of golf and children andcould be at leisure now. But while the wife bent her neckforward, enraptured by the glow of the San Marco mosaics, thehusband showed his frustration by jiggling his feet, tapping onthe table, violently trying to catch flies, looking at his watch,clearing his throat, yawning, and making a sporadic sound halfwaybetween a hum and a band-saw. He blurted at last, "Well, come on,come on, Heaven's sake, let's get going!"

"Goingwhere?" his wife sighed. "We're here!"

"I know, but good God, you can't just sit around allday! Let's--we can go back to the hotel and write somemore letters, can't we?"

When the man of affairs and efficiency and death was gone,Hayden sighed, "I've said that a lot of the Colonists in Florenceare too idle, but that's incomparably better than therestless-footed sightseers like that man. Yes, you and I'll sithere for seven years."

But the clouds were coming now, were darkening, and he wasdependable enough to make Olivia go.

When they had reached their topolino and started southward,rain was already scouting in a sulky afternoon sky. Olivia lookedtired; her youthful white linen, unsuited to motoring, wassomewhat mussy; she was half yawning.

He ordered, "Go to sleep. The late hours these two eveningshave been too much for you. I'll drive fast, but with the caredue to my learned passenger."

She dozed off, with that ivory cheek, that sleek blackness ofhair, near his shoulder. He wanted to touch her, but in his rigidcreed nothing was more enduring than his father's croakinginjunction, "Both hands on the wheel, Son,especially whenyou're out with the girls." And he had a memory of a car whirlingoff the Bison Park highway, turning over. He remembered, too,that once before, when they had been coming down from Fiesole, hehad for a second touched her hand in the car. Out of all this hehad now a quite satisfactory nervousness and worry till he madehimself forget it.

It was raining before they reached Bologna, and from herquivering he knew that Olivia had awakened and was stifflyuncomfortable.

"It's all right. Pavement not very slippery. Relax, darling,"he clucked, and he was surprised at the kindness in his ownvoice.

He made a business of getting them home. They did not talk,and she must again have slid into sleep. As they swung up thesteep climb beyond Bologna, up into the mountains, snowflakesbegan shivering down in front of them; tentative wisps of down,then large, solid-looking flakes against which, he began toimagine, they might bump and be smashed.

Olivia awoke with a nervous "Oh!"

"I'm used to winter driving. And good road. Don't worry."

But it was hard to see clearly through the windshield. Theblades of the wiper could not do much against the thick grease ofwet snow; the glass was streaky and clouded, and on the sharpmounting curves he had to slacken speed, waste the momentum heneeded, to see which way the curves were turning.

As she leaned to a curve, Olivia's shoulder touched his, andhe found that she was rigid.

At just over two thousand feet of altitude, they cameinstantly, without warning, into a belt of fog. He was blind inthe fog, and he had to keep going or slide back. It wasimpossible to see the sides of the road. He opened the windowbeside him and drove with his head thrust outside, the snowlicking his forehead and cheeks and chilled nose, the fog soakinghis hair. But moving slowly, sometimes at five miles an hour, hecould make out thus the boulder-marked boundaries of thehighway.

For all the fog, the wind was loud enough so that not till shehad repeated it did he hear Olivia's distressed, "What wouldhappen if we shot off the road here?"

He drew his head far enough into the car to answer, "Probablywouldn't hurt a thing. We'd just drop onto a meadow slope and bestopped by the rocks and brush."

So? To run off the road--again? Was he to crush Olivia as hehad crushed Caprice? Was that his ever-revolving fate?

She went on, "And then again we might keep on going--fivehundred feet?"

"Could be."

She laughed. "Oh, its all right. I'm getting used to it. Youaren't scared?"

"This is just routine fog driving. Bus drivers do thisregularly, and never even notice it."

"But you're not a routine bus driver. You have no idea how Iadmire your competence. But think of all the fine scenery thatmust be lavishing itself unnoticed, straight down below usthere--on both sides of this ridge. I'm glad I can't see how fardown!"

He was too absorbed to comment. He had never driven in a worsefog, and with a road so steep, so curving, so slippery with snow,he could not save their lives if the car skidded and tookcharge.

He was back below the Bison Park highway, imprisoned, too lateto begin living again--and then he would not let himself bethere. He bleakly forced himself to be only here, single-minded.He methodically considered stopping in one of the turnouts, butwith boundary lines so blurred by the fog, he might be hit thereby another car. It was safer to go on.

He was startled when two sickly car lights were conjured upjust in front of him, and he had to swerve, to take the chance ofgoing off the road and down, bottomlessly down.

She shuddered, "Oh! Shouldn't we stop?"

"We shall, the minute we hit a place, a village or somethingwhere there is room for safe parking, and we can get out and havea drink. I remember one or two inns up along here. And we've gotto begin thinking about holing up for the night. This fog maykeep up till morning, and if we stayed in the car, we'd aboutfreeze. But we may find a country inn."

"You mean we may have to sleep there tonight?"

"Probably."

"All right."

He was pleased that she should agree, and a little dubiousabout his own pleasure in it.

They had now a month, a year, of agony. Snow slid maliciouslythrough the open window beside Hayden, and he could feel Olivia'sshoulder shaking convulsively as she became more wet and chilled.The stone markers were only darker blurs in a general darkdrifting gray. But they had to go on.

They were penned in a moving prison for a lifetime sentence,to be ended, perhaps, by sudden and shocking death. But they hadto go on.

Only with a tired incredulity did he see and lose and seeagain a fabulous glow in the smear ahead, and then a cluster offog-wrapped lights. "Golly!" he said, and not very logicallywanted to kiss Olivia but, busy with the clammy wheel, didnothing so reasonable.

They had reached some kind of a fair-sized building, with ablessed wide parking space. He bade her, "Wait in the car till Isize the place up." Both of them breathed long and sighingly withthe relief of being, for a moment, safe.

Their refuge, he found, was a mountain-country combination ofhotel, grocery shop, wine shop, bar, billiard room andrestaurant. At the counter a dozen young mountaineers weredrinking, tough but not unfriendly, and they nodded to hisgreeting. The landlady, in her cascade of striped apron, was awoman of character and considerable poundage. The walls wereroughcast, and the three dining tables had cloths worn anddarned, but it was all clean enough, and there was a pinkterra-cotta stove that shouted warmth.

Yes, the landlady said, she had three bedrooms for rent, twostill unoccupied; yes, he could have a fine supper here, with thechoicest of veal.

It was toward seven now, with no chance of the fog clearing.He hurried out to assure Olivia, "Warm! Clean! Two rooms! Grub!We'll stay the night."

"Yes." She crawled out of the topolino, a comic figure in thelaprobe heaped over her white linen. She tottered withstiffness--wavering, sobbing. He held her to him, not kissing herbut laying his warmed cheek against her ghostly cheek, and sheclung to him, hands tight about his shoulders, whimpering, "Sochildish, nothing but a little cold on a good road, fine mainhighway, and me frightened like that! But I was so lost andscared. But I'm so glad I'm with you!"

"Want a brandy?"

"Si, si, certo! And a room that doesn't keep slidingover into an abyss!"

"Can do."

"My mountaineer! My valiant major!"

"Come on."

In the crowded barroom-restaurant the drinkers looked atOlivia with relish. Her color was Calabrian, but her unmeltingeyes convinced them that she was not Italian but English, andfrom their fathers, who had known the spacious days when all ofthe English milords took walking trips in the mountains, they hadheard that all Englishwomen are beautiful and mad.

The landlady showed them the bedrooms: narrow, stone-floored,cold as outdoors. On each of the narrow beds was one of thoseItalian country quilts evidently stuffed with steel-filings andgeology, which, though they are very heavy, on the other handinduce no warmth at all.

But Olivia said gaily, "You would have your adventure! You'llhave it tonight, sleeping in this Greenland igloo. But there's avery nice sacred oleograph in each room.Bene!"

As they went back downstairs, through the partly open door ofthe third bedroom peered an old man with a fall of despondentmustache and an ancient cape gone gray-green.

"Our fellow guest. He looks all right," Hayden muttered.

(He was in Europe, he actually was in Italy, at an inn, atnight, with his girl, with a man of cloaked mystery down thehall, and he was not making it all up in his hospital bed inNewlife, sleepless, looking at the radium dial of his bedsideclock!)

Olivia insisted, "Oh, the old man is fine. Possibly just alittle homicidal--believes that he is a soldier of Garibaldi andwe are Austrians. . . . Of course you noticed that there are nolocks on our bedroom doors."

"You can wedge a chair under the knob."

"Don't be silly. I shall depend on you."

They had with them their bags, packed for Venice, but of anywashing save with a can of hot water there was no prospect. Intheir glaring hunger, they did not care. "I never allow myselfbath salts nor a bath thermometer, not even since I inherited theten million," she said cheerfully; then: "But if wehadgone off the road . . ."

He stroked her cheek, and hastened to get into her thespiritual solace of hot noodle soup. The mountaineers had gonehome, and the common room became a private dining room and thelandlady their private chef. They had spaghetti, veal cooked withmozzarella cheese, pink cake and pink local wine. By moving theirtable next to the pink terra-cotta stove, into which the landladykept stuffing brush roots, they were not cold--not intolerablycold--just shivering a little.

The mystery man in the cape came down to have his spaghetti,but he did not seem to be looking at them. He read in a small oldleather-bound book.

The dining room was also the lounge, and they sat at theirtable long after dinner.

"Comfortable?" Hayden said. He meant his voice to be onlyplacid and encouraging, but it sounded tender.

"Very! You know, this place isn't really strange to me. It'shomelike--something warm and littered and casual about it.Sometimes I get tired of the cold chastity of my room at the TreCorone. It's just a hygienic waiting room for tired souls. Yourroom is better, a bit more disordered and bachelor-slatternly,and yet it's almost as bitterly neat as mine."

"What do you know about my room?"

"Oh, I look in every time I pass it. You have a neighborlywild-western way of leaving your door open."

"I suppose I do." He laughed at himself. "My pose is thesolitary scholar--the devout hermit--Marsilio Ficino--mustn't bedisturbed by anything--chase out the dog and strangle thechildren. And all the while I guess I want to hear those cheerfuldomestic noises: the cook smashing dishes and Vito Zenzerobawling out Perpetua for stealing the guests' perfume and notsaving any of it for him. And hoping that youwill give mea Hello and come in. Why don't you?"

"I do sometimes--in spirit--and have long grave talks withyou."

"What do we say in those grave talks?"

"I ask your opinion, as an architect, on the merits offan-vaulting."

"I see!"

"And sometimes I feel like reading to you my sister's latestletter--evenings when I'm a little homesick."

"Why don't you?"

"I never getthat homesick! Oh, darling . . ."

"Yes?"

"Let's not waste this one completely quiet evening--maybe theonly one we'll ever have--waste it in being chatty," said Olivia."I get worried about you. It's impersonal, really, but it risesfrom such a liking for you, and respect.

"As I heard Mr. Dodsworth say to you once, why do you letEurope get you? For us Americans it's a drug, a sleeping-draught,all made of poppies and the wonder of old, old civilizations andreligions and dreams, so lulling after our brisk, raw climate athome, where we have to face the blizzard, fight through it orfreeze. Go home, my dear!"

"Would you go back with me?"

"I can't. Europehas got me. I'm an exile here, butback in America I'll always be an exile double-distilled."

The old man in the faded cape sighed to himself, "There is anAmerican couple who are not glib and hustling, but true tenderlovers. Darling forgotten, we were like that,then!"

He rose, bowed good-night, and left them.

"But you," Olivia was urging Hayden, "can still go back toAmerica uninfected."

"I'm not so sure. I love Florence. It's very much like you. Iwonder sometimes if I'll ever go home. With Caprice gone, I'd belonely there."

He realized with a jar that he ought never to speak of Capriceto Olivia. He hastened to cover it with a false-hearty, "InFlorence there's a kind of perpetual excitement; notfootball-game excitement but a blissful stir. I look in at somenew church, or call on Nat Friar and listen to his newest liesabout Sir Henry Belfont. He swears that for twenty-two yearsBelfont was butler for the Duke of Nottingham and sold thehousehold wine and invested the swag in gambling houses. Or I goto the Dodsworths' for bridge. But most of all, I can talk toyou, after dinner--when you're not being cold and repulsive."

"Am I cold sometimes?"

"And repulsive."

"Wonderful! I try to be, so that I won't get found out as theembarrassed village tomboy I am at heart. And you're still thevillage high-school hero: the basketball captain and tenor inyour Episcopal choir and valedictorian, with such a thoughtfulCommencement essay comparing Columbus and General Grant. That wasa good life we knew as kids--so much more than the surfaceFlorence that we see. It was as real as this mountain wind. Goback to it while you can."

"Would you mind if I left you?"

She looked at him full, ivory softly flushing, and murmured,"It would be very much safer for me if you left me!"

She became warmly sleepy, in relaxation from the cold, thedanger. She stretched her arms out on the table and dropped herhead on them. She turned her pure, shadowy face toward him for amoment, with a funny, babyish smile, a defenseless smile allunlike her normal dignity, and went confidently off to sleep.

He passed his hand over her head, her shoulders, her goodarms, not actually touching them but seeming to follow a delicateinvisible integument that sheathed her and kept her inviolate.Then, unmoving, he watched her. Time was abolished, time andspace were only in her. And the landlady came heavily clumpingand Olivia awoke.

Hayden rather thought that, in her mountain accent, thelandlady was saying, "Good night. When you get ready to go tobed, put out the lights in this room. Sleep well." She leered atHayden and thumped away and upstairs.

"Uuuuuuuh," yawned Olivia.

"What did our hostess say?"

Olivia slowly sat straight, murmured slowly, "She said thatall pleasant things must come to an end and that it's time for usto say good-night."

Suddenly it all came over him.

He bluntly moved his chair toward hers, put his arm round her,pulled her toward him.

"Olivia! I had been planning to make love to you--not planningit all day, not all our journey, but tonight, when you were softand warm and near me. But something has hit me hard, somethingtoo basic to allow any experimental love-making. I don't know--Ithink I may be desperately in love with you. And when I think ofthe dreadful thing I might have done in trying to tempt you, I'maghast! I'm not fit to love you. I'm a murderer! I murderedCaprice by my carelessness.I am not fit!"

She sprang up and he agitatedly rose to face her. Her voicewas strained and fierce, with not one evasive civilized qualm init.

"You did not murder her! You're a fool to say it! You told meabout her--you've told me much more than you knew--about her andabout you. But if you had meant to kill her, I'd be glad!"

"No!"

"I'm glad you did! I hate your damn, curly-headed,curly-minded leech, Caprice! Sucking your blood--living on yourkindness and your gentleness!"

"That's not true! She was plucky and gay. . . ."

"She was a sneak thief of life!"

"Olivia!"

"O-liv-ia! Professoressa Dottoressa Olivia! That frump! Thatgood, safe, cautious doctor of frigidity! She's dead, too, andyou murdered her, too--thank God! The wild highlander in me hascome to life again, in this wild, windy highland--thank God.Dearest Hayden, quit blaming yourself, quit smothering yourself!I love you!"

Her arms were round his neck and she was pressed against himbefore his hands locked behind her shoulders. When he could lookat her, all the restraints in her face were loosened, and she wasas abandoned as the most feckless highland lass, and breathed ashard.

She said nothing more, and they did not remember to turn offthe lights in the dining room.

The morning sun was warm and shameless, and their eggs,consumed to a view of snowy Apennine peaks absurdly like piles ofthe best peach ice cream, had ozone in them--so Hayden asserted.They were chatty and they were smiling somewhat smugly, and didnot even see an old man with a cape and a small Elzevir.

"Looks as though we are to be beautifully married," saidHayden.

"Astonishingly enough, it does! My lord and master, may I goon studying?"

"You are graciously permitted. Do you want to stay on inItaly, and maybe France and Holland and so on, for a fewyears?"

"Oh, a couple of years or so, if you can stick it. But I dowant to see your Newlife--your house--our house! I want to findout whether I've learned so much about the terror and splendor ofthe Middle Ages that now I can become a halfway decentcommonplace wife and do the job as well as Catherine Sforzawould. Oh, yes, I shall love Newlife--in a controlled way!"

"We'll build a Renaissance church there."

"What do you meanwe will?You will! I'm asimple, admiring wife now. I shan't even give you any advice,ever. Whatever you do will seem wonderful to me. . . . Exceptjust this. You are not to build any Renaissance churches orGothic churches or Romanesque or anything else imitative ofEurope. Go ahead and develop the American Georgian, as youplanned. Stand for something; don't just copy."

He said meekly, "Yes, that might be--yes."

All the way to Florence, she sang Neapolitan lyrics andsmoothed his sleeve.

With a not very-well-defined feeling that now they shouldmarch out from solitude and take their civic place, Olivia andHayden were presently seen flauntingly together everywhere inFlorence, at church, at the bars, walking on the Tornabuoni andthe Lungarno. In the tight environment of theirpensione,which was as close to them and sometimes as itchily intrusive asa hair shirt, they had not announced any engagement and they kepttheir separate tables, but their attachment must have beenclear.

Certainly it was to Vito Zenzero, clerk, headwaiter, andauthority on which countesses in town were authentic. Vito lookedconfidently at Olivia as he took her dinner order, and she seemedcontented now to be accepted as merely a woman, betrayed and lostto scholarship and generally happy. Every time Hayden looked fromhis table to hers, he smiled and Olivia smiled and Vito smiledwith them both, and Olivia was not offended.

As a child, Hayden had devotedly trusted in his sturdy father,his fragile and fanciful mother. But from this serenity theneighborhood bully, a foul brat, had first startled him. WithCaprice and Jesse Bradbin he had been distrustful, constantlyvigilant. Now, first since the dawn years, he felt, with Olivia,not only an arousing tension but a secure faith, in which hismind flowed smooth and full.

He was proud of escorting this young woman, so wise, so warmlybeautiful, so affectionate--but only to him. Her brown dress,which formerly had seemed merely serviceable and neat, was to himnow a garment of singular gracefulness and fine fabric, and itschoice showed his lady's knowledge of the smart world. It seemedto him that her darkly pallid face was richer now with new fastblood. It must have seemed so to every one, for Mrs. Dodsworthobserved, "You're getting out more now, Olivia. You look muchlivelier for it."

And said Sam Dodsworth, "I used to be embarrassed with you twoyoung highbrows, but you've become as simple-hearted a couple asI ever saw. Glad of it. Edith claims that we old married exhibitsget what she calls vicarious pleasure out of young love. Don'tyou two let me down, like a lot of undependable young pups thesedays--eight different engagements and two divorces in five years.You two stick!"

"We'll stick!" proclaimed Hayden, and Olivia lookedcomplaisant--though, to be precise, their betrothal was mostundefined, with such unromantic business as deciding when andwhere they would be married scarcely discussed. But the ardorbetween them certainly had not lessened and, in the pallidcautiousness of the Tre Corone boarding house as in the wild inn,they roused each other to an ardor that sometimes frightenedHayden.

"You seem changed, somehow," they all said to Olivia--TessieWeepswell, the prima donna of bridge, Mrs. Manse, Prince UgoTramontana, and if Vito Zenzero did not say it, his eyes said itfor him. Most of them all, Hayden was startled by it.

Olivia was a good workman; she was as steadily about hersubway labors at the libraries as ever, but she mocked her ownlaboriousness now; she was occasionally willing to sit long overred Chianti at lunch, and in every inch of her, as Haydenlovingly surveyed her, he found her blood more torrential--inmoving lips, in hot cheeks, in firmly grasping hands.

It was particularly at Nat Friar's house that they wereaccepted as a Young Couple. Not for many years had theonce-gallant young Nathaniel Greenleaf Friar of Boston been anadventurous amorist. Nowadays he looked upon passion as he lookedupon assassination: as a diversion that had been fashionable inthe Middle Ages, and very useful, but of which, surely, there hadbeen enough by 1600.

At supper for the Young Couple, served on his living-roomtable cleared of books and pipes, with a noble San Daniele ham,Nat smiled and teased his beard, and addressed Hayden: "I supposeI must give my sanction to the dangerous exploit that Dr. Lomondand you are contemplating. People still do get married, do they?I thought they all got tired of it about twenty-five yearsago.

"Well, marriage is an excellent and almost tolerableinstitution for groundlings who have nothing else to keep themannoyed and occupied in the long evenings, but I have nevercommended it for scholars. All through my life I have hadacquaintances who dashed in howling, 'Nat, you need some one totake care of you, and I've found just the woman for you!' Thenthey drag in some weedy virgin or unwieldy widow whose ambitionis to be supported in return for such caretaking as hiding myslippers where I can never find them, or quarreling with my maid,whom I have cherished for fifteen years, and replacing her with afancy male who cooks with butter and collects even more than thelegal illegal commission of ten per cent on all shopping. Thesesolitary animals who call themselves 'scholars'--they shouldnever marry. And Ada will agree."

"You," said Mrs. Shaliston Baker, gently, "are the mostselfish, loquacious and untidy old barbarian living."

"Uncle Nat," said Olivia, "I could kill you with pleasure. Iused to be cynical, too, but now I can see that there may be abetter reason for living than just a knowledge of Etruscantombs."

"If you two women really believed any of that, you wouldreally kill me and not just babble about it, when I make so basican attack on your sex, when I judiciously point out that a wife'snotion of being a faithful helpmate is to be willing to waitwhile you are paying the bill for the mink coat she has swindledout of you. But no woman believes in Women. When I attack yourfaction, you both gloat."

"Oh, pooh!" said Olivia.

"And you, Hayden, you agree with me, or presently will."

Startled, Hayden wondered about that. He admitted to himselfthat he was sometimes a little edgy over the panting watchfulnesswhich the changed Olivia now kept over him. He had been sofree!

Among the yodeling witnesses to their bliss, none was morefervid than those newpensione boarders, theGrenadiers.

The Grenadiers, as Vito Zenzero had named them, weremiddle-aged twin American ladies. They had been well paid fordivorcing uncouth husbands who were in trade--shoes and wholesaleplumbing; who were not, in short, "creative."Creative wasthe Grenadiers' favorite word. It wascreative to sellantiques but not plumbing.

The Grenadiers came from Pennsylvania, but they had lived longin England, in Bloomsbury boarding houses, and they said"lift"--when they remembered it--and hoped to be taken forEnglish.

They took photographs all day long.

They had also lived in Carmel, Taos, Taxco, Greenwich Villageand Montparnasse, tracking down not so much Culture as thecreative and romantic dealers in Culture: ballet-dancers,summer-theater directors, fiddlers. They had now moved theirfield station to Florence.

They took photographs all day long and showed them to you allevening long.

They were unbeatable at coursing through churches, galleries,art shops, and they took buses out to Prato and the Certosa. Theyhad picked up a young male slut who was supposed to be anAmerican student but whose studies were only of bars. Theyintroduced him as "such an ardent, creative talent--he speaksseven languages--he justhates America!"

Whichever the seven languages may have been, they did notinclude any Italian, nor much English beyond, "Actually,""Amusing" and "Oh, my dears."

The Grenadiers' burlesque of his own Culture-stalking madeHayden want to go home, where he would cultivate not thisquarter-knowledge of history but his full and accurate knowledgeof Newlife; where he could tell you, offhand, just how much12,758 Schuyler Boulevard would bring per front foot, and who wasthe father of the wife of the third baseman of the Newlife team.He denied his own denial; he insisted that his white nights ofoutwatching the Bear had been fruitful, but he was learning whatolder and wearier practitioners of scholarship and the arts alllearn: that their worst enemy is the rich female amateur.

Hayden could endure the winter cold of his room, the contemptof Jesse Bradbin, but he could not endure the approval of theGrenadier Sisters when they bubbled to him, "We do think thatyour engagement to Dr. Olivia isthe most romantic thingwe ever saw. It's truly creative: an architect whoappreciates how vulgar most Americans are marrying a womanscholar who knows how many gardeners Lorenzo Mag-nifico kept athis villa!"

Put that way, Hayden saw his interest in Olivia as fairlysickening.

"But, Mr. Chart," croaked the Grenadiers, "you'll haveto watch your step. Very few of you men have the chance to be theconsort of Dr. Olivia--such a rare woman and she can put it overany of you men, and you got to admit it, when it comes tocreative ability. You may be so efficient and all that, but hereyou have to take a back seat. We'll bet a cookie, if Olivia quitsher teaching job when you get married, she'll step right out onthe lecture platform, and my! think how proud you'll be, withthousands of people listening to her, hundreds anyway, when sheexplains what St. Catherine and St. Francis and Boccaccio and allthose deep thinkers were thinking! You let us tell you, MisterMan, you'll have to be content to share her with the world!"

He brooded to himself, "Perhaps an uninspired routinedraftsman like me would feel more secure with a woman who isn'tin danger of being intoxicated by the limelight and themicrophone and fools like these sisters. No! Nonsense! That'shalf treachery and half idiocy. Dear Olivia, she would never ridea sound-truck in the public square!"

And Olivia joined him in ridiculing the Grenadiers'proprietorship of the good, the true and the beautiful, but oneevening she listened unsnickering when they gushed, "Oh, Dr.Olivia, you've got to excuse us if we bore you by raving so aboutyou. We do love Culture, oh, we think it's simply wonderful, andso much needed, but we're just amateurs compared with awonderful, wonderful trained expert like you!"

Olivia murmured, "Me? I'm a schoolma'am who was lucky inhaving hardboiled teachers."

But she did listen while the Grenadiers gave her the usefulinformation that she was a mistress of medieval law and asbeautiful as Clarice Orsini.

Hayden noted that the Olivia who once, after thepensione dinner, had taken coffee alone at her table andthen flitted off to her barricaded cell, was staying on forcoffee in the lounge, and now and then holding forth toeye-brightened circles on what was really worth seeing inFlorence. When the North Italy agent for the Little DandyTractors of Moline said to her admiringly, "Say, Doctor, there'sone thing I never could get straight about these doggone MiddleAges--maybe you can tell me," then Olivia did tell him, and shedid not look at an impatient Mr. Hayden Chart off in acorner.

Somewhat less than four weeks after their mountain inn, fourweeks during which Hayden had tried to march on in Italianhistory, Olivia demanded, while they dined at Paoli's, in theirfamiliar escutcheon-brightened corner, "Darling, there's onequite important thing you might do for me."

"It's done."

"I want to go to lunch at Sir Henry Belfont's some more."

"That pompous old fake? You said you never wanted to see himagain. You disliked him even more than I did."

"I have reasons."

"But how could I arrange it? I can't phone him and say we wanta change from the Tre Corone boiled tongue and spinach, and howmuch does he charge?"

"No! Don't try that. He might take you seriously and take usas boarders and he'd charge enough to ruin us. Whatever the oldpot may be, I'm sure he knows how to make it pay. . . . As you'llmake it pay, my ardent young architect, when I've looked overyour setup in Newlife and probably fired your partner, Bradbin orwhatever his silly name is, for cheating you! With Henry, it willbe extremely easy. Call him up and invite him and Lady Belfont tolunch at some cheaptrattoria--be sure and give him thename of the place. He'd hate it. So he'll haw a little and thenask if he can't invite you and Dr. Lomond--you know that lovelyLivy?--to his place instead."

"Do you really want to go there and listen to him tell howwell he knows the Queen of Saxony and His Serene Grace, theSixteenth Duke of Brabant?"

"Well now, Henry knows a lot about Italian painting, at leasta quarter as much as Prince Ugo. And he's very rich and vain. IfI could get him interested in our art gallery at my university--Ihave a not entirely silly hope that when we're married and Ibreak my university connections, they may make a new post for me:lecturer on history and only have to go there a month or so outof every year, but keep in touch. And they might name thelecturership after me."

"You'd be away from Newlife that long?"

"You could come along and listen, if you wanted to."

"Yes--yes . . ."

"Anyway, there's no sense in your inverted snobbery about SirHenry. He may come in very useful. Imagine him coming to visit atthe university while I'm there, and me introducing the oldwindbag to the president and the students. They'd be so impressedby his tenth-rate title. And then maybe he'll give us the artgallery. So run along now and do as I tell you, and don'targue."

"Have you such a definite expectation of being bored inNewlife--or rather, with me--that you're already sketching anemergency exit?"

"I'll adore every minute with you, and I expect to run ourservants like a sergeant major. But you know that with theacademic work I've done, I do have other interests. Afterall!"

"But Olivia, suppose we don't have any servants to run and wehave to do our own housework, you and I together? You've urged meto freelance, and that may not mean much money for quite awhile."

"Then you'll need my help more than ever, need me making alittle money, too. Darling, why are you so difficult today, soargumentative? You aren't usually."

"This whole business of catering to a poop like Belfontrevolts me. A little while ago you would have scorned the thoughtof toadying to him. You would have slapped down anybody whosuggested that you would ever be willing to introduce him to yourpresident--whom you also despise!"

"My dear, that scrupulous Dr. Lomond--the chilly, opinionatedold prig!--is gone, and I'm another woman. You ought to know. Youcertainly contributed enough to the change. And you can't have meboth the shrinking virgin and the bold earthy lover--you can'thave anything both ways. Now skip in and phone!"

The telephonic swindling worked out as the shrewd new Oliviahad planned. Sir Henry shuddered at the thought of meeting normalItalians at a restaurant, and he lavishly invited Hayden andOlivia to the Villa Satiro.

They drove up in the topolino, which again caused anaggravated spasm of agony in the butler, who was a cheap reprintof Sir Henry, not bound in the original eyebrows.

As they descended, out from a taxicab just arrived frisked astalwart and handsome young man over whom Olivia fluttered, "Whata beautiful animalhe is! A Lombard knight, without fearand splendidly without brains. I can place him within a decade ortwo: 875 A.D., I think."

He was almost certainly an American, with a look about him ofScandinavian ancestry: an extremely large young man in his earlythirties. Over his fresh-looking tweeds a light topcoat was slungfrom his shoulders like a cape. He was hatless, with anexuberance of flaxen hair. Hayden, who looked upon the fellowwith much less exuberance than Olivia, thought that with a showof knighthood he combined a suggestion of a college footballstar, of a vacuum-cleaner salesman, and of a popular singingevangelist shouting jazz piety.

The stranger waved his wide hand to them and entered the villaafter them, in the manner of royalty standing aside for agedpeasants.

Sir Henry met them in the hall and said to Olivia, as thoughnobly amused, "I seem to be specializing today in you streamlinedYankee scholars. You are all so very brisk about cartelizingfacts and diagrams that you make a shy old British putterer likeme seem incorrigibly provincial.

"This young gentleman who has charged in with you is ProfessorLundsgard--ProfessorLorenzo Lundsgard--till recently theFrench and Spanish don at Huguenot University, which is somewherein your Southern states.

"He has resigned, and I understand that he is to devotehimself to the study of our wistful Italian culture, whichnowadays is so unused to being wooed by anyone so resolute andtwittering with dawn as you two acolytes--you three. In hisletter introducing Professor Lundsgard, a man who calls himselfPresident Sleman of Huguenot informs me that our youthful friendis a 'stimulating teacher and an accomplished scholar, who willstir up the sleeping Tuscan lions.' That is a spectacle that Ishall very much enjoy. . . . Dr. Lundsgard, this your rivallion-stirrer, Dr. Olivia Lomond of the University of--Winnemac, Ibelieve it is called. Oh. And Mr. Chart."

Then he let them go in to lunch. Lady Belfont was also there,though this is noted, like the day's temperature, only as amatter of record.

As they wavered in to face the butler and the footman,standing like the Sphinx and the largest pyramid, Hayden notedhow gallantly Lundsgard smiled at Olivia, and how sharply hesized her up. Her smile in return was warmed by a flirtatiousnesswhich six weeks ago she would have denounced as cheap. He saw,too, how the beige vicuna sweater which Lundsgard wore forwaistcoat managed on his hearty torso to get itself to look likechain mail, and how the sun through the lofty windows brought outmetallic lights in his rough, corn-colored hair.

The five of them, plus the inescapable Marchesa Valdarno, satprim about the refectory table of Irish oak, eating their moldsof rice with duck livers served on English plates with views ofKent, while Belfont, with what he felt to be gentlemanly butlearned humor, pumped Lundsgard, who answered with good-heartedsimplicity.

"I'm afraid I can't claim to be any kind of a real scholar,Sir Henry. Fact, in college, I was more devoted to football, butI had a sneaking worship for learning, especially old history.Like a dumb farmer seeing a vision of chariots in the August sky,and not daring to even try and explain them. Oh, I did get my PhiBeta Kappa key, along with my letter in two sports, but that wasan accident."

("This fellow is probably my own age, but he seems muchfresher and younger," thought Hayden, and looked anxiously atOlivia, who was fixed on Lundsgard, her lips open.)

"In the War I served in North Africa; a very high-rankingcorporal I was, till they demoted me to second looey, and I gotlaid up with nothing more than a fool machine-gun wound in onefoot. While I was convalescing, I got acquainted with Frenchcafé society there and learned a little of the lingo. ThenI got hit again, really awful light, but they invalided me outand I went home and got my Ph.D. in Romance languages--never verygood at them, either! But I got a job teaching in that littleuniversity and, by coaching football and taking the president'sson out duck-hunting, I got by.

"Then a sort of ridiculous thing happened. I was spending aChristmas vacation with a friend, and right out of the blue, amovie producer offered me a job acting--as a young cop in a BigCity picture, and then couple of Westerns. Seemed likepreposterously big salary: three-fifty a week. Dollars, notcents! Now here's the funny thing. It wasn't at any college buton the lot in Hollywood that I first heard the Gospel of Beauty,from a grand old script writer who had been a playwright inHungary.

"I started reading about the Middle Ages, and then by chance,which is sometimes so kind to a heavy-handed duffer like me, Iwas in a Middle Ages costume play, and I was sold on historycomplete. The actor and halfback scholar!"

Lundsgard thundered with laughter, in which they vaguelyjoined.

("Olivia is looking at him like a Fond Mother.")

"Oh, I'm a fighting fool for study. Sir Henry, I've read allyour essays on Tuscan Art, and personally I think they're muchmore profound than Bernard Berenson. Much!"

Sir Henry looked lavish. That made two people who thoughtso.

"I have a pretty definite idea in coming here. I want toprepare myself to give the undisciplined people of the UnitedStates a Message of the sublime importance of authority, and Iwant to hand on to them at the same time the lofty philosophy ofSt. Thomas Aquinas, the magnificence of Lorenzo, the reverence ofSavonarola, and through it all, the superworldly quality ofLeadership."

"Ah," condescended Sir Henry.

"And in America, where any garageman thinks himself just asgood as a bank president, we so lack the phenomenon of sanctifiedand yet forceful Leadership. And as a pioneer, I may do somethingto create it."

("The man is a fool. But Olivia looks as if she likes him. Butcannibal sandwich with laurel trimmings is not my meat.")

"All of you clever people," said Lundsgard, "will think I am aridiculous bumpkin, but I do have some plans that are awfullyexciting. My agent is planning a huge lecture tour for me, on sixsubjects, including Mysticism and Leadership and--and this issomething new--the lectures are to be tied in with a featuremovie, which I am to script, about the Medicis, with the leadplayed by Rupert Osgoswold--or possibly by your humbleservant!"

Olivia muttered, so softly that it was heard only by Hayden,"Very exciting!"

Lundsgard caroled on, "The president of Cornucopia Films--doyou know that outfit, Sir Henry?"

"My boy, I am much too secluded and timid to understand theneologies of the cinema, but it does happen that my Man ofBusiness, in London, has invested some small sums for me inCornucopia."

"Well, that's dandy. Maybe you'll be interested in the factthat the president of Cornucopia is going to town on this, andhe's advanced a big wad to finance my work here. Being such astupid guy and having so little time, I have to depend onassistants--photographers and secretaries and researchers and soon. But Cornucopia agrees with me that we must not think of thisas a money-making project--though I got to admit that it'llprobably bring me in several thousand bucks a week! But we thinkof it as a public service, to improve the mental stamina andsubtlety of America. A great friend of my father and, I amhonored to say, of mine, a United States Senator who carries alot of weight on the Foreign Relations Committee, believes thatmy crusade for more authority and leadership might both elevateour restless American morals and improve our standing everywhereabroad. That goes to show there are people who see our cryingneed!

"Sir Henry, I realize how fortunate I am to be allowed to seethe Villa Satiro. I have read a little of its history as well asthe book of its present owner. I am honored!"

Lundsgard turned on Sir Henry, on the Marchesa Valdarno, onOlivia a smile full of soul and sunshine, the smile of a braveyoung ambassador who loves battle and smitings, but also loveslittle children and quotations fromAlice in Wonderland.He chanted, "By myself, I never could learn much of the MiddleAges. I am too much the energetic outdoor man. What I'd like todo, Sir Henry, is to ask an occasional question of a veteran likeyou, and perhaps of Dr. Lomond, of whose accomplishments I haveheard."

In a quarter-hour of well-padded if not particularlywell-turned sentences, Sir Henry said, Yes, the Middle Ages andthe Renaissance make clear the horrors of this so-calledDemocracy. Civilization ended with the Fall of the Bastille.Aristocracy means the Rule of the Best, and how sadly we needthat amid the clamorous and greedy herd of Britain, and no doubtof your America.

To all this delirium Lundsgard listened with attention, andHayden reflected that good listeners are to good talkers as oneto ten.

His Olivia listened also.

Hayden had heard her hold forth on the wickedness of thepopularizers who condense a five-hundred-page book on Einsteininto a two-page article including three racy anecdotes and athumb-nail drawing of a relativitized cow. She liked her booksthick and close-printed and accurate about their geography, andshe had demanded that everybody else like them the hard way, too.And she was now looking tenderly at a man who was going tolecture on philosophy in the Rose Bowl.

Sir Henry was bestowing on Lundsgard an invitation to frequenthis villa, use his books, come and have lunch with Prince Ugo."And I shall write to the president of Cornucopia," said SirHenry, "my approval of your Crusade."

Running over with gratitude, Lundsgard took leave. Oliviaburst out, "Have you a taxi coming, Mr. Lundsgard? I'm sure Mr.Chart would be glad to give you a lift in his funny littleflivver."

"Splendid, Doctor; much obliged," said Lundsgard.

But Hayden was thinking, "It isn't funny and it isn't aflivver. It has a powerful motor and sweet steering, and howyou're going to get your fat carcass into it, Lundsgard, I don'tknow." But aloud, "Surely. Of course. Thank you for a beautifullunch--Lady Belfont."

He remembered how generous to guests Caprice had been withhis cigarettes, his Scotch, even his fine large linenhandkerchiefs; how she would insist to a guest after a party, atthree on a winter morning, "Oh, don't phone--Hay will beglad to drive you home!"

By sitting sidewise in the back of the topolino and not daringto breathe, Lundsgard was perilously carted down into town.Olivia turned her head to discourse with him most of the way,while Hay drove and sulked. She commented:

"I do think your plan is a little wild, Mr. Lundsgard, but . .."

Lundsgard shouted, "Listen, baby, I hate this formality amongus Yanks, even when we're in Europe. I wish you'd call meLorenzo, or maybe Lorry. I'm certainly going to call you Livy,even if you are a top-flight history shark, and if your boyfriend don't slap me down for it, I'll call him Hay. Okay, Doc?Be friendly to the poor cowboy minnesinger."

She giggled. She said, "Very well."

Never had Hayden called her anything more loose than Olivia;never, he remembered, even in tenderness, had she called himanything but Mr. Chart and then Hayden.

"But Lorry," she burst out, "do you actually think you canmake ecclesiastical art and thought as simple to Main Street asthe rules of croquet?"

"Maybe not, but it's worth taking a shot. Holy smoke, don'tyou think all this deep stuff, even in my bum version of it, willbe better for the American hoi pollois than a lot of crime andsex stories? Huh, darling?"

And to Hay's profound gloom, the tawny lily, the one-time nunof learning, answered, "Yes, I do."

"Say, folks," Mr. Lundsgard gurgled, "from all I can learn,the average age of the Anglo-American Colony here must be aboutsixty-five. Kick me out if I get intrusive, but I do hope I'mgoing to be friendly with you young brats.

"Say, come see my office at the Excelsior. Maybe it'll handyou a good laugh. It's pretty commercial for a highbrow crusader,but if I'm going to collect as many facts about Florence incouple months as that old gasbag, Belfont, has in maybe twentyyears, I've got to have a regular assembly-belt. I've got Romedown cold in my notes and snapshots, and some Venice and Ravenna,and now it's Florry's turn. . . . Listen, I sound brash, but I'mawful in earnest. Come on!"

Mr. Lundsgard was extremely appealing, yet all the while hissun-shot basso was extremely dominating. He leaned forward to patOlivia's shoulder, and the priestess of the chill twilight lethis hand lie there for a minute.

From a second bedroom in Lundsgard's large suite at theExcelsior, all bedroom furniture had been removed, and he hadturned it into one of the briskest offices Hayden had everseen.

At a typewriter on the newest thing in extra-sized green steeltypists' desks, with a dictation phonograph beside her, a youngwoman secretary was working. On an oak table in the center wereat least fifty books on Italian history, with quarterly reviewsin four languages--not looking much perused. An enormousfiling-cabinet had on its various drawers such tasty butunexpected labels as "Anecdotes of Famous Dukes," "Clothing,Houses & Dec.," "Jewels & Furs," "Manners, Morals in Med.Courts," "Beautiful Bits from Poets, Philosophers," "HuntingLeopards, Falcons, Methods of Execution," "Horses, Heroism."

On one wall was a bulletin board to which a youngish Italianwith dark hair and a wise, thin face was pinning snapshots ofFlorentine palaces, city walls, armor from the museums. He lookedlike an educated cousin of Vito Zenzero, a cousin who could readthe telephone book without moving his lips.

"This is Angelo Gazza, my photographer--best photographer inItaly," said Lundsgard. "Born here in Florry, but lived inEngland, and chummed with the Yankee troops here. Speaks Englishby the book. He saves my life. I see a historic bit, or quaint,beautiful or native. I always have Angelo following me and Snap!and he gets the local color for me even better than my notes. . .. Angelo, this is Dr. Lomond and Mr. Chart. They'll give us a lotof pointers about what to see in Florry. We'll be plenty gratefulto 'em."

Gazza nodded. If he was grateful now, he did not show it.

Nor was the secretary, when Lundsgard introduced her,particularly cordial. She had a fine face, but it was toovarnished, too reminiscent of the Marchesa Valdarno, and her hairwas a slide of smooth ash-blond. She seemed hard and competent,but the near-green eyes which sized up Olivia had in themresentment and suffering.

"This is Miss Hoxler, Evelyn Hoxler, or Mrs. Baccio, if youprefer. She's true-blue American, but she's lived here for years;married to a fine young Italian businessman, friend of mine, ArtBaccio; lives in Rome. She just loves this art work. Hey,Evelyn?"

"Yes," said Miss Hoxler, and it was as sullen a sound as thecry of a marsh bird.

"She's unquestionably the finest stenog in Italy, in bothItalian and English. She never forgets an engagement--or lets meforget one. Hey, Evelyn?"

"Yes?" said Miss Hoxler, and went back to typing, and themachine sounded profane.

"Well, children, we'll go in and have a drink."

Mr. Lundsgard markedly did not include Gazza or Miss Hoxler inhis invitation.

He shut the door between the office and his living room. Aportable bar had been set up; one rich in bourbon, rye and Frenchbrandy. As he mixed a highball, Lundsgard snarled, "Thatconfounded Hoxler woman is a good machine-pounder, but she'sgetting altogether too independent for my taste. I guess shemisses her husband, though he's the most wishy-washy excuse for aman you ever saw. I found a job for him, in an office, but do youthink he appreciates it? Well, a man who tries to do somethingfor mankind gets to expect ingratitude. The real trouble withmost folks is that they haven't got any insight."

And Olivia apparently agreed.

Lundsgard was bountiful in suggestions for things they threecould do together: excursions to near-by villages; and if Haydenwas not enthusiastic about the implication that he and his goodlittle topolino would be at their constant service, Olivia was.None of Lundsgard's jolly objectives was new to her but shegreeted them with apparent surprise and delight.

That night, late, in Hayden's room, he was as harsh with heras his tenderness would permit. She was tired, her eyes wereprint-tired, and she stretched out in his deepest chair, relaxed,while he sat primly straight and interrogated her, with an uglymemory of a time when he had investigated a wartime carpentersuspected of sabotage.

"You like this fellow, Lundsgard?"

"Like him, dear? How do you mean? He has so much buoyancy andfreshness. They're really charming to a tired old lady like me,and even his amusing ignorances. He's so naive."

"That's your favorite word."

"Well, it's the favorite quality among the few men who areattracted by a dried-up old maid like me."

"Not noticeably dried-up now!"

They smiled together.

"'Livy!' This fellow is a clinker. We may see too much ofhim," protested Hayden.

Clinker was one of their private words. It had been aninvention of Hayden, along with smoocher, and he had worked out aDoctrine of Clinkers. He may have been thinking ofpre-oil-heating days and how hard it was to get a burnt-out coal,a clinker, out of a furnace grate.

Clinkers are those newly arrived persons, not friends or theirclose kin or people likely to become friends, but acquaintancesof twenty years back, or friends of friends of friends, orcomplete strangers, who come bounding into your particularFlorence or your Newlife with letters of introduction, or merelywith a telephone call or a note on hotel stationery, announcing,"You've probably never heard of me but I know the sister-in-lawof the nephew of agreat friend of yours. I'm here onlyfor three days, but I thought I might have the pleasure ofshaking your hand and buying you a cocktail."

Which, in Florence, meant that they expected a free cocktail,a free meal, an escorted tour of the city, and perhapsintroductions to Prince Ugo and Sam Dodsworth. They would alsoaccept a trip to Siena and your assistance in all their shopping.As many clinkers came to Newlife as to Florence, but there, atleast, they could speak the language and buy their owncigarettes.

It is the supposition of all clinkers that the chief purposeof any Americans in coming all the way to Florence is to spendall his time there with fellow Americans.

In the Doctrine of Clinkers there is no implication thatclinkers are persons of low manners. They may be virtuouslodge-members and favorite honorary pall-bearers, soft-voiced andinformed about astronomy and the history of West Point. But inquantities of more than one a season, they are appallingnuisances.

Frequently they believe that they are being benefactors towhat they call "lonely exiles." One of them clacked to Hayden onthe telephone, "Course I've never met you, but I said to myself,'What the hell! Hay'll be tickled to death to see an Americanface, I guess!'"

Olivia sat up to protest, "That's unfair. Lorry isn't aclinker. He's going to stay here and be one of us--whatever thatmeans--delicate connoisseurs, I suppose!"

"There is nothing delicate about your 'Lorry.' Playful he is,powerful he is, and a good drinking-man. He'll die of apoplexy atfifty. But delicate? No!"

"So much the better! He won't just dabble in art criticism.He's going at it with an earnestness and yet a humility that maytake him far. He's really touching. And he doesn't take himselftoo seriously; he has a divine, rough humor about his owndeficiencies. He may become quite a fair scholar."

"Maybe--if he isn't entirely a charlatan."

"Why are you so intolerant?"

"With this fellow, frankly, I'm a little jealous of him. Ididn't expect you--oh, you say you're changed, but it wasn't solong ago that you were the coolest judge of bumptiousness I evermet, and I didn't expect you to get so girlish over a ham actorplaying a professor. A real crush!"

"Oh, pooh!"

"I agree."

"Honestly, Hayden, you astonish me, being jealous when I'mmerely amused by the antics of a good-hearted climber. I takeLorry about as seriously as I do that cocker spaniel we alwaysmeet on the Tornabuoni. I probably wouldn't recognize Lorry if Isaw him tomorrow."

She did protest too much, thought Hayden. Was there a faintstink of treachery? He urged:

"I'd better get my patent on you filed, quick."

"What am I? An invention?"

"Of the devil! There is a sort of theory that we are engagedto be married, which seems to me a surprisingly good idea, but wehave never much discussed when or what afterward. Can't we bemarried this summer, and take a look at the Alps and maybeAustria, and then in the fall we'll decide whether we want to gohome or stay on in Europe? What about it?"

"I'm willing, though I do think one of the charms of ourfriendship has been that we haven't had a lot of family around todrive us into a marital schedule, so they can order their weddinggarments early. Can't we still just drift, for a while yet?"

"Possibly."

It was not her evasiveness which dismayed him but thediscovery in himself of relief that she was evading fixed terms,and that he was not yet going to be tied down todefiniteness.

If it had not been for the threat to Olivia's unstableemotions, he might have liked Lundsgard for his backwoods humor.The three had comfortable outings at the enticing countryrestaurants at Maiano and Pratolino and St. Casciano and satthere on outdoor terraces for hours. Olivia mockingly calledLundsgard the "Dazzling Dane" and explained to him that it is notenough to qualify as an authority to know that Italy is apeninsula and that the Medicis were bankers. Lundsgard took itaffably, and he danced with Olivia in arbors to the melody ofaccordions.

He was taken up by the peerage of the American Colony withunexpected speed. He had a way of telling retired gentlemen whoseonly vocabularies were of the Stock Exchange how profound theywere about international politics, and of looking at their wiveswith reverence and surprise. He had a competent game of bridge, aneatness in mixing drinks, a skill in listening to symptoms,which caused Hayden to wonder if his story of untutored countryboyhood was quite truthful.

On his own, Lundsgard gave a party which marked him as notjust an acceptable eighth for dinner, but as a social factor ofmerit. He hired three suites at the Excelsior for the evening; inone, he had the bridge-players, in one the more thoughtfulboozers, in the third there was dancing to a Swiss orchestra inBulgarian costumes playing Brazilian tunes. Even the testiestColonists advanced from bridge to the bar and a few even to thesamba, and Lundsgard was considered a man of the rarestparts.

Thereafter, the juicy seventeen-year-old granddaughters of theexiled bankers, who now and then visited Florence, clamored forthe presence of Lundsgard.

Along with the pillars, Lundsgard got in with the dubious andunexplained who make up an interesting part of all the foreigncolonies in Florence and of the Italians who are close to them:mysterious owners of villas gorgeous but secluded; ex-officialsof the Allied Military Government who had been minor clerksbefore War II and millionaires afterward; royalty in exile;Italians in whose presence it was not considered tactful tomention dope-running; men sometimes grave and solid seen usuallywith men young and pretty.

In Florence, even the patently proper British and Americansare often inexplicable. With so many demure ladies you neverquite know whether they are widows, divorced or still married andof what sort their husbands' grandparents had been. And with allthese (since he did not, like Hayden, have to stay home eveningsand study, having his Miss Evelyn Hoxler to do that for him)Lundsgard cruised, blithe and free, generally popular, and Haydenreflected that there is no more useful pose than that of thehonest yokel of whom it would be a shame to take advantage.

However much Hayden doubted Lundsgard, it was a season whenclinkers were trooping into town, and any tested permanentacquaintance was a refuge. Olivia and Hayden and Lundsgardescaped from tourists on frequent mountain picnics, and it was onone of these that Hayden's suspicions of Olivia and Lundsgardforced him to recognize them.

Lundsgard was a skilled picnic guest. He scrupulously fetchedhis share of the lunch, paid for his share of the gasoline, andonce, when there was a tire to be changed, he pushed Hayden asideand did all the changing. . . . Hayden ungratefully thought thattheir family Tristan was somewhat too buoyant and powerful aboutit. Though probably a year older than Hayden, he contrived tolook more youthful.

Nowadays he usually called Olivia "Sister," "Cookie" or"Helena Troy."

They picknicked today up above Settignano in a grove of oliveand apple trees, with a venerable castle nearby, and the towersand low houses of Florence far below. Throughout lunch--cold duckand bread and butter and red wine and cheese with dates andraisins--Lundsgard was jovially teasing Olivia about herfeebleness. He insisted that she had studied so much that she wasunable now to walk two blocks. She lost all detachment andshouted at Lundsgard, as though he were some one whom it wasimportant to impress, that in college she could have been womantrack champion if she had taken the time for training.

"Okay, let's see how good you are, Cutie!" bellowed Lundsgard."I'll race you down to that old olive tree with the trunk rottedthrough."

It is not at all certain that Lundsgard let her win the race;he was a little cumbersome and wavering, while the Diana of theLaurentian Library was astonishingly fleet. She did win, and theycame back up the hillside laughing, innocently swinging hand inhand. But the uncomfortable Hayden wondered whether itwasso innocent. There are things other than purloined letters thatare most artfully concealed by exposing them. But the tworeturned to him so clear-eyed and so candidly laughing that hefelt rebuked.

He and his suspicions had it out at three o'clock that night.He had awakened in the darkness to a memory which tore at him, ofOlivia's eyes utterly fixed on this lout, the tip of her tonguemoving against her upper lip.

He could not sleep again. Could he ever sleep again?

In his old dressing-gown and soft worn Pullman slippers hepadded over to the marble-topped table and, with his little Metastove, he made coffee, served with condensed milk.

No, he thought calmly, he was not the typical suspicioushusband, with a vanity which made him surprised that his wifecould like any other male at all, when she was so blessed as tohavehis divine favor. There was no suspicion about it; hewas coldly and wretchedly sure that Olivia could surrender tothis lusty Lundsgard animal; the question was whether she haddone so now, and whether she would now go on succumbing to adreary line of sneak thieves afterward.

"I coaxed her out of the cold tomb and warmed her. Did I dothat only for the benefit of Lundsgard and his successors?"

Then, "Oh, what nonsense! To be so sick-jealous you can'tstand her even laughing with a lively acquaintance! She's assingle-minded in love as . . .

"She's a reckless fool, she's uncontrollable when she takes afancy to a man. I'd like to hear Professor Leslie Vintner'sversion of their affair! At least, Caprice was dependable thatway. She never more than flirted at a dance. . . . I don't thinkshe did. . . . Of course there are some flabby, whimperingindividuals who were born to be cuckolded. . . . Oh, go back tobed, Chart! Can't you get enough torture without making a hobbyof it?"

When the three lunched next, Hayden could not resist probingthe campus Casanova about his opinion of this recently discoveredworld-menace, Sex.

Lundsgard had often confided that he had never been married,and now he was frank and unsparing of himself. He had beenfervently engaged, he said, to a "cute little chick and awfulsmart" at Huguenot University, but he admitted that in hisruthless youth he had been cruel to this young lady. He hadscolded her for not rising to the splendor of his ambition to bea lord of learning--at several thousand dollars a week.

"I was kind of raw and unsympathetic, I reckon. I wasn't a bigenough, rich enough soul then to appreciate a gentle little saintlike Bessie and be patient with her."

But his humility quickly ran out, and he hinted that inHollywood and Rome he had been favored by the handsomest and mostbefurred women. And Olivia, Hayden marked, was not angered bythis rakishness. She listened to Lundsgard's advertising withoutone of the crisp comments, flavored with mustard and pepper andice, for which she had once been dreaded. "I'd better get her outto Newlife quick!" thought Hayden.

At the Tre Corone, now, she did not merely tolerate Vito'sinsinuating croons. Hayden heard Vito mutter that they might goout to a night club, and though she refused, she was nothaughty.

Even at the Villa Satiro, to which they were often invited forlunch now, along with Lundsgard, she was not above a slyconfidence with Sir Henry, who wagged his fat back and leanedover her with the coyness of a distinguished circus elephant.

Hayden was bored by Belfont's ponderous way of being salaciousby referring to the reprehensible doings of the less respectableGrecian gods. Hayden wondered whether Olivia would be spirituallyadvancing or declining if she switched from Lundsgard'sboisterous salesmanship to Sir Henry's soggy glory. Yet now, whenhe was most distressed by her base transmutation, Hayden was mostheld by her ardent love, and the once simple Tre Coroneboarding-house had become for him a splendor of heaven edged withinfernal gloom.

Then the cable from his partner, Jesse Bradbin, fromNewlife:

"Big deal pending you required stop. Big dough quit beingirresponsible come home next boat."

It tempted him to think of leaving paradise and all the heavyproprieties demanded in an angel, and of being busy and importantin Newlife again; of not having to remember historical dates orimpress the Dodsworths or shepherd his ewe lamb lest she fallover the most obvious cliffs. He could smell the Rocky Mountainair, heady with sage instead of olives. And he owed something tohis fatuous yet devoted partner. But to love Olivia was moreimportant even than to snatch contracts from his worthy rivals inbusiness.

He refreshed his love by reviewing the virtues of Olivia.Remember, he coached himself, what unexampled beauty and courageand knowledge she has. You must be patient while she is gettingover her first real fling, which she takes so much the worsebecause, at nearly thirty, she's new to it.

Would Jesse Bradbin ever give up anything he greatly wantedfor him?

His cabled lie was warm and polite.

It was harder for him to snub Lundsgard because the man, witha breezy humbleness, was always turning to him for advice. Andonce he said, "I wish you'd get in on some of this movie dough,Hay, by doing a little research for me, in your spare time."

It was amiably said and amiably refused.

They were dining, Hayden and Olivia, with Nat Friar and hislove, Mrs. Shaliston Baker. The dinner, served on Nat'sliving-room table imperfectly cleared of books and the chess set,was as good as ever, with curried shrimp and tiny strawberries,but Nat was less bland. He was restless, he spilled the wine, andAda Baker watched him nervously, like a little old cat watchingits good but alarming friend, the woolly setter. Their examplemade Hayden and Olivia unusually gentle with each other. When Natsaid, "After you two young people are married, as Ada and I havenever had the courage to be, you mustn't stay in the cautioussplendor of Florence but try the world," then Olivia put out herhand, to let it lie relaxed in Hayden's.

Hayden explained the tidal phenomenon of Lorenzo Lundsgard,whom Nat had never seen. "He has depressing energy and touchingreverence. It might interest you to meet him, Nat."

"So that I may then re-enact the very sensible and enjoyableegotism of the Pharisee in gloating, 'Thank God I am not as thesetourists'?"

"Why not? By the way, Lundsgard sounded me out about makingsome money on the side as part-time researcher for him. I turnedit down."

"What," wondered Nat, "is a researcher?"

"You are."

"Young gentleman, I am a frowsty old bachelor. I am also alie-abed and a secret drinker. I know what research is: somethingunpleasant that men in white jackets, like barbers, do to dogs indungeon laboratories. But I don't know what a researcher is."

"He goes out and does the marketing."

"You say that this Dr. Lundsgard," fretted Nat, "would like aresearcher in medieval folkways?"

"Yes. Bring him in two facts and he'll cook them into a wholelecture."

"Do you suppose he could use me, Hayden?"

"Could a village bank 'use' J. Pierpont Morgan? Could apopular preacher 'use' an archangel?"

"The answer is not necessarily 'yes' in either case. Theirmethods might be different. But the fact is . . ."

Nat spoke heavily, looking down into his beard.

"This may be the last dinner I shall ever give. My cable hasfinally come, refusing reprieve: the company to which I socannily switched all my funds, not long ago, has failed. Myincome is finished. I need a job. This is the first time I haveever said, 'I need a job.'"

Mrs. Baker cried out and she, the fragile and prudent, ran toNat and shamelessly sat on his knee, her head against hisshoulder.

"I have been too cowardly to tell Ada till I should befortified by the presence of you strong barbarians. Yes, withconsiderable ingenuity, I have managed to lose every cent Ihad."

Mrs. Baker said harshly, "Nonsense! You have all that Ihave."

"But you haven't anything, my beloved; just enough to existon. It doesn't matter. For some time I have been preparing forthis. I haven't paid my rent for six months, and my poor servant,I haven't paid her now for two months and two days, and this pastweek she has been bringing me in vegetables from her brother, whois a market-gardener and a reader of Petrarch. He is really ourhost, this evening, but this is the last time I shall impose onhim. By the way, he speaks with an interesting Livornese accentwith a word, now and then, that I cannot spot except as a Greeksurvival. . . . Oh, Ada, Ada, don't, my dear!"

Mrs. Baker was sobbing, close against him, all her pride andfrail austerity gone.

"It's not so bad, Ada. It's a new adventure. I shall now workaccording to other people's notions of what my usefulness may be,instead of my own. If there is anything here, or even back in theStates, that I can do that is not too honest or too cultural, Ishall do it gladly. Meantime, Hayden, do you think this Dr.Lundsgard might hire me for a season? I am very punctual andtidy--well, reasonably. And at my age, I shall come verycheap."

Hayden telephoned to Lundsgard that there was a chance hemight be able to get the renowned Professor Friar to give himsome "material," and of course Dr. Friar was one of only elevenmen living who knew European History minute by minute, acre byacre, from 400 A.D. to 1800.

Lundsgard was excited. "I have some of Dr. Friar's articlescut out. You honestly think he might brief me? How would I get tomeet him? Should I go and call on him at his home? Would you bewilling to take me there?"

Hayden reflected that the shabbiness of Nat's living roomwould cut a hundred dollars a week off his market value, and hesaid hastily, "No, I think that as you would be his superiorofficer, it would be protocol for him to call on you."

"I don't insist on form, with a big shot like him, though ofcourse good form--well, you know how it is. Good form is one ofthe things that I intend to take back to the States, along withphilosophy; I mean the super-high-tone good form, like Ugo's. Somaybe . . . But ask the Prof to pick his own hour to come here.Does he ever sneak in a drink?"

"If you had some very dry sherry for him, I think he mighttake a sip."

"I'll have some so dry he'll think it's from Kansas."

Nat Friar put on his one good gray suit, he washed and combedhis beard, he had a hefty glass of cognac at home, he lookedOlympian and felt even better. But in Lundsgard's suite he spokewith mild delicacy and only touched the glass of offertorysherry.

Hayden fretted to himself, "Nat and I are selling the mosthonest goods on the market, and yet we're somehow being fakes. Idon't like selling one's own self--for Nat or for Olivia or forme."

Encouraged by Lundsgard, Nat started on long tales of the oldItaly: Amadeo the Green Count; Pope Anacletus II, who was of thegreat Jewish family of the Pierleoni; that poet and gallant,Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who was to become Pope Pius II, tobuild the mountain village of Pienza as his monument and to leada crusade; the Wolf of Gubbio, a beast wolf not a human one, whowas converted and became a practising Christian; Clarice Strozzi,who cursed the tyrants out of the Medici Palace. The stories wereas full of gaiety as they were of erudition, and Lundsgard was inecstasy. He humbly addressed Nat as "sir," and he keptejaculating over the chronicles, "Why, that's corking, sir,that's superb, that's just what I need!"

Hayden wondered why Lundsgard did not take notes, till hediscovered that the door to the office was part open and that inthere Evelyn Hoxler was thriftily getting it all down inshorthand.

Lundsgard hesitated, "I know of course, sir, that if you caredto give me your invaluable aid for a month or so, I couldn't evenbegin to pay you what such priceless learning is worth. But woulda hundred and fifty dollars a week somewhat compensate you?"

Hayden was certain that Nat would not know whether that wasfabulously large or pitifully small, and he stepped in with, "WhyLundsgard, you ought certainly to pay him at least two hundred aweek!"

Lundsgard's glance was very sharp, somewhat resentful, and hesaid curtly, "We'll make it one-seventy-five."

"That sounds very nice," beamed Nat.

With no further "sirs," Lundsgard ordered, "Professor, youstart in here next Monday morning, nine o'clock."

"Nine? Nine in themorning? Very well," said Natdisconsolately.

All day long--that is, from nine-thirty or ten or eleven, whenhe arrived, and leaving out the hour that he took off now andthen when he went out for a drink--in an old velvet jacket and anantique straw gardening hat with which he shaded his eyes, Natsat happily dictating anecdotes out of the most unhackneyed(though reasonably accurate) history.

He thought the dictation machine was the most patient ear hehad ever found. He sat with the mouthpiece tucked into his beard,smiling at the machine and making explanatory gestures in itsdirection, telling it about kings and cardinals as though it waslikely already to have heard a great deal about them. Nat paid noattention at all to Lundsgard's visitors, such as smoochers whocame in to sell Lundsgard original Botticellis for twenty-fivedollars.

Translated into lire, which just now were about six hundred tothe dollar, Nat's hundred and seventy-five dollars a week seemedto him like Babylonian wealth. He paid his debts to his servantand her brother, he gave a little something to his landlord, andhe bought for himself a fine purple corduroy smoking-jacket withpockets large enough to carry books. For Hayden he bought anAldine Aristophanes and for Mrs. Shaliston Baker, a silvertea-caddy.

Lundsgard never criticized Nat for unpunctuality. He just readpage on page of medieval oddities transcribed by Evelyn Hoxlerfrom Nat's recorded prattle, and chuckled, "My dear ProfessorFriar, you come awful dear, but you sure are a treasure!"

"Dr. Lundsgard is a very kind man," said Nat to Hayden.

"I suppose he is."

"I just wonder why he took up the crabbed calling of being amedievalist. He would have been so useful as a singing cowboy--ifhe can sing."

"If he can punch cattle."

"Exactly. But always very kind."

"Oh, yes--yes, certainly--very kind."

In the late afternoon, after office hours, Hayden went to seeLundsgard. He thought he heard"Avanti," when he tapped atthe outer door of the suite; he opened, and stood aghast. Beyondthe living room, in the office, Lundsgard could be heard talkingto Evelyn Hoxler:

"I've had enough of your bellyaching. Go on! Bawl! I like tohear it, Eve. It makes you even homelier than when you put on thewhite enamel and look like a madam. Lissen. You got no kickcoming at all. You knew what would happen just as well as I did.In fact, you planned it. You hoped to get a wad of--well, call itseverance money out of me."

"Lorry, I didn't! I wanted to help Arturo. You made me feelthat anything I did for you, when you were so friendly with him,was really for him."

"The loving Mrs. Baccio! The innocent Miss Hoxler! Just acountry babe! Say, I'd hate to write to the registrar in whateverhayseed county you really come from and ask him your real birthdate!"

"Don't. Please, Lorry! I won't be angry any more."

"You're damn right you won't. Not around here you won't. And Idon't think you'll be around here at all, much longer."

Hayden hastened away, down the hotel corridor, more sick thanfurious. There are maggots too vile to touch. And for tomorrowthere was to have been a giddy lunch with Lundsgard andOlivia.

At the Tre Corone he found her, very cheerful, and he cried,"Sweet, I want to call off tomorrow's lunch with Lundsgard."

"Why?" Her disappointment was clear.

"He isn't as decent a fellow as you thought. I've just heardhim talking to Eve Hoxler, viciously."

"I'm glad to hear it. At last! That woman has been trying tonab him. She takes advantage of his good nature and his quitecharming reverence for women."

"Rev--Oh, good God!"

"Don't you ever have any argument but 'Good God'? Aside fromthe blasphemy, it's a little undetailed."

"All right. We'llhave our lunch with that felthead,and I'll try to get him to show just how much reverence he reallyhas for your frail, cast-iron sex!"

At their lunch, at Paoli's, with what he felt to be silkencunning, not looking at Olivia but being as cunning as a dove andas innocent as a serpent, he challenged Lundsgard:

"You're always saying that women inspire you, and yet I wonderwhat you really think about the ones like Olivia, who are soindependent?"

He wondered if the fault could have been Evelyn Hoxler's, whenhe saw how grave and mature Lundsgard became:

"You won't like my sure-enough attitude, Hay, and Livywon't."

"Oh?" said Hayden, and Olivia said, "Oh!"

"I'll have to give you my whole philosophy, and I'm not veryarticulate, you might say. As I see it, the world has been goingthrough what you might call a multiple revolution, and the uppitygirl who thinks her whole family are dubs and the left-wingagitator and the psychoanalyst and all these smeary modernpainters belong right together--all anarchists. But I figuretheir seven-story revolution is over, all but the shouting. Thewhole world wants authority and, you might call it, tradition.New world coming!

"It'll first of all wantheroes and not a gang ofstatisticians and wisecracking critics. Unluckily for me, I'm notbig enough, or I'm too early, to be one of the star magnificoes,but I can help clear the way for them--yes, and you just watch'em ride in on a golden highway, with flags and trumpets!

"These guys that'll be the leaders, they'll have to have powerand responsibility. They'll want their orders obeyed on the jump,though they'll be darned generous to their mob in return. Theymay not wear any ten-ton armor, but they'll make my ancestorLorry the Magnificent, Serial One, look like a ribbon clerk.They'll use chemistry and jet planes and atomic power, and theirslogan will be that only the best is good enough, and I guessthey'll be willing to get killed for it--and to kill!"

To all this souvenir-post-card Nietzsche, this 1905pre-Hitlerism, Olivia was listening, with no hostility but withfond amusement at her Lorry's enthusiasm. Encouraged by her ifnot by Hayden, he boomed on:

"But all these high duties for the men leaders mean there'sgot to be even higher duties for the women. A guy can't lead anarmy and still stay at home and teach the Little Woman golf.Nowadays the career woman, who was the big news even five yearsago, is as old-fashioned as a buggy whip. Now she's got a bettergoal: to be loyal to men that got to be big enough to be loyalto; to give herself in a real blazing devotion to helping carryon her man's battle for supremacy; to lead the Leader. Can't yousee it, Livy? She won't get a professor's chair or aslick, leather-covered desk in an advertising agency, but she'llshare a throne--and believe me, there's going to be thrones toshare! You bet! To be queen in her home isn't old-fashioned butthe most ultramodern, up-to-the-split-second, re-revolutionaryideal there is!

"So go ahead and shoot me, both of you. Hay, you can report meto all your revolutionary little friends for wanting to march allthe poor farmboys (like you and me both!) right back to theirpeasant huts, unless they can get the Vision of Leadership andobey it. Okay! I'm ready!"

Afterward, Hayden avoided discussing with Olivia thisscarlet-and-pea-green vision of Lundsgard, the view of thenoblest man as the mining-camp bully. If she had been unhappyabout it, he wanted to spare her; if she had liked it, he wantedto spare himself.

And that same afternoon, Evelyn Hoxler, who had never talkedto Hayden by himself, telephoned asking him, and anxiously, tomeet her at Gilli's for a drink.

When he met her, there was something rigid and frighteningabout Miss Hoxler. He had the impression of a rattlesnake inambush, and indeed there was a good deal of hiss in all her S's,as she rapidly drank down Italian cognacs:

"Lundsgard is sending me sobbing back to Rome, and I asked tosee you, Mr. Chart, so I could try and do the stinker a littleharm before I go skipping back to commit suicide."

She did not strike Hayden as notably benevolent, and helistened not too willingly to her hatred.

"I gave Lorry the best clerical assistancehe'll everget and you've probably guessed--I never tried to hide itespecially--I gave him a lot more. He's a quick worker. When youfirst meet him, if you can be useful, he'll love you, but themoment he can get more out of sponging on somebody else's brains,out you go, without even a handshake. When he gets to be adictator, he'll pull off some of the finest purges in history,and then sleep like a baby.

"By the way, his first name isn't Lorenzo. His fond mothernamed her golden-haired Viking rosebud Oley, and in college hechanged that to Lawrence, and he put on the Lorenzo, along with ashot at English accent (when he remembers it) in Hollywood.

"I want to warn you, with the most evil intentions, that whileI don't think he's had much chance to fool with this conceitedyoung woman of yours, Miss Lomond, he's certainly licking hischops."

"I think Dr. Lomond can take care of herself!"

"Iknow I can take care ofmyself! That don't doyou much good when the car hits a patch of grease like Lundsgardand skids." The appositeness of it jarred Hayden and frightenedhim. "Mr. Chart, I have a feeling you plan to get out of thiscombination cocktail party and mental sanitarium they call theAmerican Colony and go home. Home! Beat it, fast, and take thathigh-falutin sweetheart of yours along with you. So long. Noflowers!"

He met Angelo Gazza, Lundsgard's photographer, on the street,and invited him to coffee. He blurted, "What sort of a chap isthis Lundsgard, really?"

"Oh, Lorenzaccio is all right. He's a pusher. Pays pretty goodbut gets his money's worth and then some. . . . Say, you're fondof Dr. Lomond, aren't you?"

"Very. Why?"

"Oh, she comes in to see Professor Friar and maybe Lundsgardnow and then and . . . She's trained too good, forourshop. She wants us to get our facts--we do an import and exportbusiness in historical facts--she wants 'em catalogued like ahistory book, but Lundsgard tells her, 'Never mind the efficiencystuff. This isn't a factory; this is a solar center for radiatinginspiration.' Dr. Lomond is very well informed--for anAmerican."

"You don't like us Americans, do you?"

"No, that's the hell of it. I love you. Best chum I ever hadwas a master-sergeant from Brooklyn, half-Wop and half-Mick. I'dlike to live in America. That's why I keep panning you--to keepsafe from you hundred-and-eighty pound babies! Why are so manyAmericans immature? Why don't you grow up? Half of you pullingpolysyllables, when 'I don't know' would do, and the otherhalf--medical majors and chaplains and flying colonels--talkinglike high-school boys, 'Oh, Boy!' and 'Watch my smoke' and notenthusiastic about anything except baseball and women.

"And the American woman is the only one I know of whose heartand brain stay cold and indifferent to you while all the rest ofher body pretends to catch fire. An Italian or French womaneither loves you or she doesn't, but the American lady--shekisses you hot at eight-thirty and looks at you cold ateleven--or anyway at eight-thirty next morning. And yet I doadmire so your American enterprise. I am so sick of all theMemorable Ruins in Italy.

"That's what has turned so many of us into guides and postcardsellers. We could build the best ships and automobiles andelectrical equipment in the world, but our medieval gateways andpalazzi municipali gum up our city planning.

"I'd like to blow up every building in Italy older than 1890.All you tourists shrieking that it's so cute of us to havethree-foot alleys for thoroughfares and yelling your heads offwhen we put in broad boulevards like you all do at home. Oh, it'sprobably real quaint in me to be descended from some Etruscangangster. . . . And I'll watch Dr. Lomond for you like asister-in-law."

"You think she needs it?"

"Lundsgard is one of these Leaders, and all Leaders think thatall the votes and the applause and the money and the women belongto them. . . . Good luck!Ciao!"

Olivia was absent-minded at dinner and it was only after aquarter-hour of mere thermometric conversation that she said,"Lorry is going to fire that Hoxler woman."

"Yes."

"In fact he has."

"I see."

"He wants me to come in and help him out, three or four hoursa day, till he finds a new secretary."

"You can't do it! You absolutely can't!"

"I'm going to."

"You, the independent, and you want to be that fellow'scopyist!"

"I shall be nothing of the sort. I'll really be afellow-researcher with Uncle Nat, and I'll put the office filesin order--they need it. Or do youinsist on my spendingall the rest of my life in libraries where nobody ever comes,except displaced mice? Or perhaps you prefer to take advantage ofmy extreme fondness for you by ordering me to go home!"

"I love you, and when you turn beastly, when you use argumentsthat you know are crooked, I am helpless, Olivia--the only personin the world that I am helpless with."

"I know. Forgive me. And honestly, you can just forget it.It'll only be a few hours a day with Lorry for a few weeks."

"That seems to me too much, withhim!"

"But I need the money, Hay--Hayden. Maybe with your sharpeyes, that can look right through a fat woman and see a duckybungalow and a two-thousand-dollar fee, you noticed, when youfirst arrived here, that I hadn't many clothes, and most of themkind of shabby. Well, I haven't a very large scholarship, andI've been buying quite a wardrobe, entirely for you, and I ambusted."

"Then you must let me . . ."

"No! That much independence I'll still keep. No!"

When the wildfire news ran round the hills that Signore ilProfessor Friar was paying his debts, he was assaulted by bills ayear old, five years old, most of which he had forgotten and someof which he did not owe. In particular, his landlord, long atolerant friend, once he saw the sheen of ten-thousand-lire noteswanted to be paid to date, and his former intimates, thebook-sellers, threatened to cart off his library, beloved and aquarter unpaid-for.

Nat refused to take even a loan from Mrs. Baker, who waslittle more affluent than himself. He became grim. Now that hehad started, he would be businesslike.

He said to Hayden, "I would prefer, of course, to desertLundsgard, now that the adventure is rusty. I have no complaintabout him; he treats me well. He is the only man living whothinks my information about Gubbio and Spoleto is worth listeningto, and that, to me, is grateful. Like many people weary withknowledge, I have perhaps unduly esteemed the fresher wisdoms ofyounger people, but this mental passion has rarely beenreciprocated--perhaps only by you and Olivia and Lundsgard. But Ihave some difficulty in liking the fact that I am now part of acultural swindle.

"I'm not sure but that Dr. Lundsgard is a very bad man. He isnimble at making historical parallels to prove that the rule ofplain unlettered men has always been disastrous, to prove that weneed louder-voiced millionaires to guide us. But to prove it, headulterates all the facts that I go down into the coal pit andshovel up to him.

"I'm not sure but that it's what you call a racket, I'm notsure but that he is in the soundest tradition of treason--treasonto love, to friendship, to patriotism, to religion, for the mostsensitive blessings are also the most interesting to betray. Inhis case, he is making a cheerful activity of treason tolearning, like the journalists who trap invalids by praisingfraudulent medical discoveries.

"He is even developing prophetic illusions: that all historyhas been moving toward a moral goal according to a discerniblescheme, and that he is the only man who can discern it. I havestudied a number of skilled methods of assassination which Imight use with him, but otherwise, what am I to do? Place yourcharming girl, Olivia, under my arm and take to the Abruzzi cavesto escape my remaining creditors?

"I can see now where all my quandary started: paying myservant, who is a true Italian peasant and never expected such aninsult from anillustrissimo!"

But Nat did nothing. And Hayden did nothing, and suddenly hewas sick of Lundsgard and Florence and Europe. It can happen sowith exiles. One moment he loved Italy; the next, its ways seemedantiquated and a little silly. He could not even hear thelanguage clearly. It was all an unaccented gabble. When he walkedin the evening, a group of sharp young loafers in front of amovie theater--as dangerous as a like group in Concord,Massachusetts--seemed to be his enemies, whispering, "Let's stabthat foreigner or chase him out of the country!"

That week, letters from home, from Jesse and Mary ElizaBradbin, from classmates whom he had not seen for ten years,letters which had recently bored him by their weather reports andthe gossip about people whom he did not remember, were suddenlyprecious salvation. When he had first come to Florence he hadgratefully used the hospitality of the governmental AmericanLibrary in the Palazzo Strozzi and read the American magazines,the newspapers. He had later become almost indifferent to theirbulletins of a land so far off, but now he hastened back to them,and they promised him the refuge of home.

That promised refuge he needed the more because daily he lessliked the relationship between Lundsgard and Olivia.

Rich now in what he considered knowledge, in Nat's anecdotesand Gazza's photographs, strong in the approval of Sir HenryBelfont and the toleration of Sam Dodsworth, Mr. Lundsgard stillconsidered Hayden a decent fellow, but he no longer consideredhis counsel of any merit, and when Hayden had an idea,Lundsgard's attitude was "Yes, yes." He preferred to see Haydenonly in bars but, grimly risking snubs, Hayden frequently marchedinto the wolf's den to find out how much of his lamb had beendevoured now.

He warned himself that Lundsgard's office was a busy place,that he had no more right to intrude there than to stroll into anoperating-room and suggest having a cigarette with a performingsurgeon. They were not snubbing him--no, they were just busy. Butall he knew was that he got snubbed.

Nat beamed at him, but even the friendly Gazza seemed annoyed,Lundsgard looked impatient, and Olivia, busy with lists ofUmbrian painters, snapped, "Oh,must you leave that dooropen, Hayden dear?"

How patronizing and unlovely was her "Hayden dear" comparedwith her tender "Dear Hayden"!

But he bullied Lundsgard and her into coming out to tea withhim. They were in the Piazza della Republica, outside ofDonnini's at a small table among Italian families prosperous andvoluble.

The researchers did not look at Hayden. Olivia was competentlyanswering Lundsgard's equally competent questions about thewool-carders guild in ancient Florence. Hayden felt like atolerated younger brother, listening to his betters. And when theinterrogation was over--he could imagine it, gilded and magnifiedand made to sound learned and important, bestowed on a respectfullecture audience in a municipal arena dedicated to wrestling,political conventions, roller skating and Shakespeare--the two ofthem apparently believed that they were alone in the Forest ofArden, no melancholy Mr. Chart within ten leagues. They creakedhappily in their wicker chairs as they teased each other--aboutpunctuality! One would not have chosen that topic as a beguilinglink between illicit lovers, and yet Lundsgard and the girl werelyric as he cloyingly bickered, "And you were ten minuteslate--you were, youwere," and the female conspiratormurmured, "Oh, pooh, I--was--not!"

It seemed to Hayden that an appalling softness had come overher in her manner toward Lundsgard. When that bounding animaltouched her bare elbow, which he did oftener than was quitenecessary for emphasis, she, the late inviolable, did not seemannoyed, and she had for him a smile which went beyond thepleased obedience which custom expects from a femaleoffice-hand.

Lundsgard was startled to discover some one much like HaydenChart still with them, and he went out of his way to get in, "Youcertainly have a grand effect on your girl friend here, Hay. Whenyou aren't around, she treats me like dirt, but when you're here,she tries to make you jealous by treating me fairly good. I wishI had your neat touch with the women!" And looked, then, atOlivia in a proprietarial pride which was more betraying than anyyelp of passion.

No.

Hayden was coldly certain that this pair of profit-huntingpedants, of ranging sensationalists, were lovers now, beyondcharity. Then they deserved each other!

But the stubbornness that had always marched with him, mostrelentless when it was most quiet, the stubbornness that hadfortified him to endure Caprice's clownish demands and JesseBradbin's witless jesting, rose in Hayden now, and he was themore resolved to save Olivia.

No one else could do it--certainly not the moist-eyed youngwoman herself, now yearning toward Lundsgard's ten-bushel ofmanly beauty. And, reflected Hayden, he himself had guiltilybroken through her poor wall of defense. She was "worthsaving"--this trained and honest woman, even now when she wasdemonstrating that she was not in all things so edifyinglyhonest.

He would save her--if. He had nothing of more importance todo, now. . . . And, with a fascination apparently undiminished byher idiocy, he happened to love her.

Lundsgard was giving himself, and apparently he felt that hewas giving them, considerable gratification in letting them knowthat he now moved on a charming social plane, jammed withGracious Living. Prince Ugo Tramontana had invited him to comefor tea and see some Second Century Roman cameos. . . . Hereferred to the learned relic as Ugo, and before he rose helighted a tremendous American cigar, with the Lorenzan band stillon it, and extinguished the match with an archducal flourish.

When Lundsgard was gone, Olivia said briskly, "Well, have tostart home and wash my face."

"Sit down again, Olivia. I want to do some scolding. I wantyou to quit your job with Lundsgard. . . ."

"I shouldn't think of it."

". . . and at once. You can call him up this evening."

"Ri-dic-ulous!" She sat down firmly.

"And tell him to hurry up and find that new stenographer--whomhe had no intention of finding."

"Why, I've never heard . . ."

"And then, without any tapering off or artful use of drugs, Iwant you to kick that fellow out, complete."

"Ab-surd!"

"I don't know precisely where you stand with Lundsgard now,but I do know it's just a matter of whether you will or whetheryou have.What?" She jumped at the unexampled force androughness of his "What?" He jumped himself.

"Whatwhat?"

"Are you two lovers now?"

She quieted down. She looked at him without fear. "Well, wecould be, and that's all I shall tell you."

"It's enough. Do you want to get rid of me?"

"No, really, Hay--Hayden, I don't. I am enormously fond ofyou. It's so happy and easy to be with you, and I admire yourdecency and calm. I would like to hold you, always--no, Iintend to hold you! And I agree with you that Lorry is amisguided and misguiding truck-driver--in fact, I know it muchbetter than you do! But he is also a knight, a blithe andunconquerable knight. After all, Giovanni delle Bande Nere wasn'tdistinguished for his accurate knowledge of dates or his fidelityto the sweet girl at home. Lorry is a fake--good Heavens, don'tyou suppose I'm well trained enough to know that! But he isextremely charming in a nasty way. Besides, what could either youor I do to head him off?"

"You really are satisfied to let yourself be tied and hogtiedby this gorilla?"

"You still do get very American, don't you, dear!"

"I hope so! Answer me! You're satisfied?"

"Maybe not. But what can I do?"

"Do you happen to know that your golden Lorenzo's real firstname is Oley?"

"Is it? That's good. It sounds strong and honest and yet notpuritanical; positively debonair. I was afraid--of course I wasreasonably sure that he wasn't ageborener Lorenzo--Ithought probably he was a Hiram or a Jabez."

"Olivia, I don't think this hour calls for humor. You musthave some notion of how serious it is for me. Leave out jealousyand hurt pride: I can choke those, but you can guess what itmeans to me to see a well-bred woman in the red hands of thatbutcher--that cigar-waving fancy gent!"

"That is my battle, or as Lorryand you would say,'That'smy lookout'!" Olivia was so defiant that she didnot even trouble herself to stress it greatly.

"Yes. It isn't easy. I couldn't slug that football hero--Iwould get killed. There's no use my exposing him as acharlatan--everybody with any scholarship guesses that already.But still, I certainly do not intend to be the complaisanthusband. I demand as strict a fidelity of you as I do of myself.And I can't do the most natural and convenient thing of all: tellyou that I am disgusted, that I am not standing any more, that Iam through; because I am still almost completely hypnotized byyou--justalmost, mind you! I don't know what to do."

Softly, but with the slippery softness of a false woman, sheurged, "Oh, forget it, my dear. It's the sort of thing that can'tlast."

"Not last--no, merely in the heart and brain and devotedfaith, that's all! Frankly, Olivia, I am trying to coach myselfto feel easy in cutting you out as I would any other vice thathurt me too much, and I can't--not yet!"

With flippant impatience, she piped, "Have you finished nowwith your fussing and clucking and general sad bewilderment oversomething that ought to be obvious--that, as I keep telling youbut you won't listen, a flirtation like this just can't last? Ormatter!"

"I've given you my warning."

"And I my warning that you will be extremely sorry, not forany crimeI am committing but for your own subhuman,dry-as-dust, school-principal nagging--with no heart in it and nohumor. Oh, Hayden, you admire our medieval gallants so much, yousay, and then the minute anything touchesyou, you fleefrom them back to your dry-codfish Maine ancestors!" She wasworking herself up to the outraged and innocent wrath that isnowhere so splendidly found as among the guilty. "I have neverlied to you or about you. Well, I am going now, and you may doexactly whatever you please!Arrivederci!"

She flounced away and, without explanations, she did not cometo dinner that evening at thepensione.

So he cut and ran.

He cut and ran. It was absurd not to have seen Rome; it wasintolerable to sit and twiddle his fingers and watch Olivia chasethe dragon and be only very annoyed by a St. George.

He drove to Rome through the pleasant hills and, as always,fell in love with Siena almost as with Florence: the square, thecathedral, the Palazzo Chigi. But Rome he found too buxom, toobusy, too operatically regal for love, and only fit for wonder,from the Vatican's sanctuary to the Palatine Hill where he walkedthrough 100 B.C.

He did perceive how grandly Rome was marching back to herancient throne as Queen of the World. Hard by an arch of theemperors he saw the jeeps parked between the Rolls-Royces andCadillacs; the traffic was more alarming than Michigan Avenue;overhead were the airplanes which rarely teased demure Florence;and in new and haughty cement buildings breathlessly telephoningwere California oilmen, Persian oilmen, British airplane agents,Hungarian cinema producers, French television engineers, Egyptiansteamship agents, quiet Russians who loved an evening alone withtheir pipes and books and one small atomic bomb, Brazilianvendors of coffee and jazz symphonies, and Croat spies spying onBulgar spies spying on Turkish spies spying on Rome.

Not even the massive haughtiness of the antique temples andthe imperial baths more lightened Hayden's technical eye than theurbanity of avenues like Via Veneto. Yet he was not annoyed thatin Rome, with all the Holy Year pilgrims, he had been unable tofind a satisfactory hotel room, and had gone with his topolinoout to a village inn. After supper there he sat on a bench in anarbor and looked at the green evening sky of Latium and washomesick for the warm buoyancy of a new and terrible Olivia.

He returned to Florence and the Tre Corone late in theafternoon and Olivia was there and unexpectedly welcoming. Shetightened her arms round him, she muttered, "So much, missed youso much."

He shakily tried to be carefree in a cheerful, "Let's go outand have dinner this evening."

"Oh, darling, I am so,so sorry, but I have aninvitation to dinner--didn't know when you were comingback--might have sent a girl a post card."

He did not ask, she did not say, from whom was her invitation."I'll make it up to you later!" she chirruped, with needlesssweetness.

He dined alone, except for the table-to-table yells of thenewest generation of boarding-house pests, who were not, thistime, large like the Grenadier Sisters and were not females andwere not American, but three diminutive and aged males fromLuxembourg. But it was all the same thing, and they entertainedhim at dinner by yelping "Haf you seen the Cenacolo in theconvent of Sant' Onofrio?No?" and "Haf you seen the tombof Oddo Altoviti by Rovezzano?No?"

Olivia returned very late, still with no informationvolunteered about her evening entertainment, and she was not soaffectionate in saying good-night to him as she had promised; shewas mechanical about it and slightly annoyed; and he went tosleep in a trance of emptiness and futility.

Hayden had been going to one Dr. Stretti to keep watch on theheadaches he still had, now and then, from his motor smash, andhad become admiring and fond of that round, dumpy, very learnedand skillful physician with his mouse of a mustache. He was notonly Hayden's friend and his doctor but, Italian-wise, his doctorbecause he was a subtle and understanding friend. On themorning after his return from Rome, Hayden's head was one roundpain held together by his skull, and he hastened to Stretti, whoassured him that this was but eyestrain from the glare of theroad from Rome. He bathed Hayden's eyes and laughed at histension and generally did medical magic on him.

Said Dr. Stretti, "My brother, who is also an architect, inTurin, and who is very curious about American methods, will be inFlorence just for today. Could you come to a very plain supper atmy flat this evening and meet him?"

Hayden had made no definite plan with Olivia for dinner thiscoming evening, and indignantly, with the injustice typical ofall particularly fond lovers, he thought, "I'll teach that youngwoman a lesson--leaving me flat last evening, my first eveningback in Florence," and he said to the doctor heartily, "Shall bevery happy to."

Dr. Stretti's apartment was in one of the long, newish,solemn, residence streets out near the Cascine; on a fourth floorreached by a particularly adventurous self-service elevator inwhich you felt, when you pressed the button for your floor, thatthe cage would fly to pieces instantly. But the apartment itselfwas like that of any well-to-do doctor in Newlife or in New York,except that there were rather more upholstered chairs aroundsmall tables in the living room, and more poison-greenupholstered armchairs with doilies, and books in three languages,and far more paintings by contemporaries.

The architect-brother, whose English was as struggling asHayden's Italian, gave him a small homesickness by confessingexactly such struggles with clients and contractors and unionsand politicians as Hayden knew at home: the same newly rich whowanted marble bathrooms for the price of tile, and tile bathroomsfor the price of linoleum. He glowed at Hayden and took him in.So did the doctor; so did Mrs. Stretti, though she spoke noEnglish at all. But she assured Hayden, with more kindness thanstrict factualness, that he was now speaking Italian like aprofessore.

The whole family took him in. In their cordiality and easewith a stranger, they seemed to him more like Americans than anynationals he had met since he had sailed. He felt at home, asafter dinner he drank small glasses ofvino santo andagreed with them that, yes, they would indeed like Hollywood andthe Grand Canyon.

But of them all, one had more importance than justwell-mannered amiability, and that was the daughter, ToscaStretti, a girl of twenty who was all eyes and shine of dark hairand slimness and youth and trustfulness. She was constantlyturning to her uncle, her parents, with affection and admiration;she loved life and loved her family. And, without having anyEnglish, she could say to Hayden that she looked upon him as aman and a remarkable one.

An aggressive American woman would have jeered of Tosca,"Sure, you men like 'em submissive, like 'em as slaves. Thislittle Italian would clean your shoes and you'd love it!" Yes,Tosca probablywould clean them, if there should be need,but devotedly, with dignity, not submissively. Without discussionshe would expect to love and ardently to be loved.

That night, abed, Hayden did not think of his colleague, thearchitect, but of Tosca. It would be fun to be with her, to teachher English, to show her his America. Why hadn't he such a girl,soft and trusting and yet as sharply capable as her mother, andnot an inspiring heartache like Olivia?

Why not? By coaxing Tosca to come home with him, he would havein the stability of home that strangeness and flavor which he hadneeded in Newlife. All next day he thought of Tosca and thethought was to him a soft comfort which he needed after reading anote which Olivia had left for him when she went off, early, tothe Laurentian Library--or to Lundsgard's boudoir office:

I had assumed we would be having dinner together last eveningbut you skipped off with no explanations. That is too bad becausethis eveningI have a date & shall not seeyou.

O. L.

His inward comment had all of lovers' logic. "But you can'tblame her. But I'm not going to stand for being stood up butshe--oh yes,she is to desert me whenever she feelslike it but I'm to stand by all the time. But naturally she wasmiffed--you can't blame her."

Olivia and he had, without any special agreement, built up ahabit of festival evening together each Saturday, with restaurantdinner and a movie or a concert, but on this warm, resonantSaturday evening in the Italian late spring, he dined drearily,alone, at the Tre Corone, cheered only by the thought of howtrustingly Tosca Stretti had smiled at him. He was at his coffeewhen Perpetua came to inform him that a "Signorina Altici" wasthere to see him, waiting in thesalotto.

Tosca? Why?

He went hurriedly and on a couch, her hat put aside, in a fawnsuit that seemed much worn and leather sandals that certainlywere worn, tired, defiant, appealing, forlorn, familiar, strangerthan any Calabria peasant, pert-nosed and freckled andred-headed, was Miss Roxanna Eldritch of Newlife, Colorado.

But mostly, she was very quiet.

She had sprung up to greet him; he had galloped forward andkissed her. She was a chunk of Home miraculously set down beforehim: the cheerful, overcrowded streets; cottonwoods and willowsby the river bank; swiftly grown skyscrapers; the office and theclub where he was not a bookish nonentity studying in an alienand indifferent land, but a man, a boss, a friend, a citizen, aperson of heart and welcome, and in it all a jolliness that couldnever warm an Olivia in her delicate savor of life--nor even aTosca conceivably so dear. And this home soil was his own,without explanations or working at it. In a jungle he had seen,startling, his own familiar flag, and Roxy and he yelled at eachother with fond tribal cries.

The more he looked at her, the more she seemed changed. Shewas as fetching as ever but she looked down at the floor morethan at him, and there was dejection in her shoulders. And,"Might as well get it over," said Roxy. "I've plumb flopped. Beenfired."

"How come?"

"Oh, partly loafing and dissipation, I guess, though I did alot of work, too. But it has slowly been borne in on me that thebright kid from the home town, who thinks it would just be toocute if she could be the big noise as an authority on Europe andtell the home folks all about the hobbies of the dethroned kingsand interview a few prime ministers, and throw in a fewexplanations of the devaluation of the pound--she isn't so hotwhen she gets into competition with the veterans that have beenhere, off and on, twenty years and speak five languages andactually read a book once.

"Funny but they simply won't see the light and obligingly handover their prestige to me and go to work in the jutefactory--along with their wives and kids. The old meanies! I senthome oceans of copy and first my managing editor used a lot andeven got a few pieces syndicated, but I guess the novelty wentbump, and little while ago, he tactfully wrote canning me, with awarm-hearted suggestion--the old sweetheart--that Imightget my old job back if I hustled to Newlife, but quick!

"But now I'm here, I want to see more of Europe, maybe Greeceand Spain, and then Israel and Egypt. And Iam going towork--work like a worker and not like a Bohemian amateur ladyjournalist who gets busy only when the bars are closed and thehandsome young vice-consul won't answer his phone.

"Honestly! Getting bounced was an awful shock to me. I guessmost American women, evensome of those that have beenquite a long time on a real job, still think that their sacredwomanhood entitles them to do anything they want to, arrive lateand loaf on the job they're paid for, and any boss that kicks isno gentleman--never was brought up at anybody's mother's knee.Shock? I'll say! It made me think, 'Rox, my man, maybe thatmanaging editor wants to print written writings and not yourcharming intentions and your sorrel hair!'

"And I guess, even before the assassination, I'd had aboutenough of the bar-to-bar girlish lady tourists of fifty, thestudents of singing who never sing anything but 'Just pickle mybones in alcohol,' and all the artistic young men from Wyomingand the Bronnix that wear nasty little beards as sandwich boardsto advertise their otherwise imperceptible talents, beards likeyoung alley goats and flannel shirts like zoot-suiters.

"While I'm over here, if it's not too inconvenient, I wouldstill like to meet one French Frenchman and one Italian Italian.You know--quaint but almost as interesting as the sixteenth youngAmerican this month to found a Little Magazine dedicated tofreedom, the new arts and gin.

"I admit I've had me quite a time with these drunks, but stilland all, I guess, along with my Uncle Joe, who was the prizedrunk in Butte, I've got something in me of Gramma O'Larrick, whoran a boarding house and sent seven sons to study for theministry.

"So I've come down here to Florence, partly because it's nottoo noisy and partly, I'll admit, because you were here, and youalways were kind. But I don't intend to sponge on you in any way,Hay, get that clear, money or time or anything. I just want yourassurance that I'm still potentially human, even if I am aflop!"

He cried,"How human! Now, right away, I'll take youout for a dinner that would make Reverend Gowelly--remember theProhibition raider, back home?--throw up his dusty hat and kissthe bartender."

"Thanks--some night--tomorrow if you'd like--but I've had arick of spaghetti already tonight."

"Tomorrow we'll look for a room for you, Roxy--maybe here inthis refined junction depot."

"Thanks, I've already found a room in a dump across the river.I asked a tourist agency. Iron cot and a kitchen chair and a nicecalico curtain for wardrobe; 327 yards from the bathroom.Honestly, I won't bother you. . . ."

"You couldn't, my dear!"

"Oh, couldn't I! Give me credit! No, all I want is some adviceabout getting a job here, for a girl that speaks no knownlanguage. . . ."

If Hayden was, a moment, inattentive, it was because he knewthat Olivia might come in and find him affectionately seated onthe couch beside the not inconspicuous charms of Roxy. Would itnot be discreet to explain Roxy before Olivia should see her--totake her out, now, to the security of a café? But heturned defiant; he rebuked himself for his sour timidity. Roxywas beyond debate a tempting wench, but he was doing nothing ofwhich to be ashamed--not like Olivia and her bounding Lorry.

"Let's see, Roxy. There's a Mrs. Dodsworth here, important inthe Colony, and I remember her saying something about being atrustee of an American school for girls that's just beingorganized. I'll phone her this evening. And now--more of you, mydear! Have you lost your heart to any of your young geniuses withthe tarred-and-feathered chins?"

"No, not much. A young female wandering around Europe alonelearns to be pretty glacial when she gets picked up."

"That happen often?"

"Continuously! French drugstore-cowboys and Norwegian artistsand Swiss professors and American G. I.'s and American lieutenantcolonels. You do get tired of their 'How about it?' smirk. We allused to think that it was the funniest thing in the world thatour great-grammas, if they could afford it, couldn't travelwithout a chaperone in black sateen, but how I would have loved achaperone, mitts and evil mind and all, in Europe!"

"Why don't you go home, Roxy?"

"Why should I?"

"It seems natural to be home, where you understand people byinstinct, understand why they do the particular things they do doand do say--dumb or dreary or noble and silly."

"Then why don't you go, Hay?"

"Oh, I've really settled down contentedly to study. And, uh, Ihave a girl I'm somewhat interested in . . ."

"Oh!"

"Two, in fact: a splendid American scholar, and an adorableItalian girl."

"Two? Then it's all right."

"I want you to . . ."

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, Mr. Chart, and me too, I'm just dying tomeet them, both of them, all sixteen of them--there's nothing Ienjoy more than meeting my gemmun-friends' lovely girl friends,except hearing you rave about them. . . . Over my dead body,Chart!"

"You still haven't given me much reason for your staying on inEurope."

"Oh, I'm just another of these American girl sparrows you seehopefully hopping along every road in Europe, afraid to chirp. Wedon't know what we want but we all believe that, without doingany special work to get it, we'll be smitten with glory andsuddenly find some romantic peak where we'll shine. Get on thestage or be what the beginners call 'penwomen' or ballet dancersor art-photographers. Or get married, but only to a tall, gentlytragic, gray-eyed painter, with black hair gone faintly gray--guynamed Peter or Michael or . . ."

"Or Lorenzo?"

"You guessed it. And I suppose I'm typical of all those youngwomen, who won't be patient, who find it easier to jump on atrain and skip on to some new capital than to stick in one placeand make solid friends."

"I don't think you are, Roxy. You've had a fling, but I knowyou'll get set. Sufficiently."

"Thank you, dear. I like to have your approval, more thananybody's, even if it is a little qualified and stingy."

He felt that he must go on admitting that he carried anOlivian passport. He was not going to sneak across the frontiers.He did his duty by a pleasantly argumentative, "But I know thatnot all you American girls in Europe are the vacuous kind youtake so much sadistic trouble in beating up. You aren't. Neitheris my--young woman living here at the Tre Corone, a professionalhistorical scholar--Dr. Lomond, Dr. Olivia Lomond."

Roxy burst. "Dr. Olivia Lomond! Oh, my foot to Dr. Lomond! Avinegary, sexless, flat-chested old maid carting you around totearooms and reading Ruskin aloud! I knew I should never have letyou come to Europe alone! You were quite a lad in Newlife,whenever you got sore on the tennis court. A plague of bot fliesand Texas jiggers on Doc-tor Lomond! That dried up arroyo!"

"No, not exactly dried up!" He tenderly took Roxy's hand; thehand of his dear little sister, his chronic niece, his oldtimeenduring friend. "I very much want you to meet her and appreciateher. . . ."

"Neither do I!"

He was stroking her hand, feeling slightly more thanavuncular, when a menace trembled in the air and made him lookup. Olivia was just inside the room, watching them, and as Haydensaw her Borgia eyes, they said, almost audibly, "Ah, Isee! And you the species of camel who has been demandingthat I give up my innocent colleague, Professor Lundsgard!"

He did have sense enough not to throw Roxy's hand at Oliviaand jump up guiltily; he did have the genius to go on holdingthat hand comfortably and to purr, "So glad you came, Olivia.This is none other than Roxanna Eldritch that I've told you somuch about--great friend of Caprice, and I've known her, blessher dear neighborly heart, since she was a baby."

Before Roxy could even get started, Olivia fired:

"That does make quite a long,long period of knowingMiss Uh,doesn't it!"

But there proved, then, to be nothing wrong with Roxy'sartillery.

They were both rare, thought Hayden: Olivia, crystal framed inivory and silver; Roxanna, rose-crystal rimmed with burnishedcopper. If they could be friends! He blundered--but perhaps nocardinal secretary of state could have been altogether diplomaticin this crisis: "I hope you two charmers are going to be closefriends. You're certainly the best friendsI have!"

Olivia said to him sweetly, "Are we also to be close friendswith your dear Tosca Stretti?"

"Now what the devil do you know about Tosca? A delightful girlbuthow . . ."

"You forget Florence is a small town. Lorry Lundsgard went into see Dr. Stretti today about a lame wrist--he strained it yearsago in a great football battle, and the doctor told him that youand his daughter had hit it off wonderfully--I think he is quitehopeful of her having an escorted tour to the wonders ofColorado, some day before long! Congratulations--to you, I mean,not to the poor young lady!"

Just when Hayden was bewildered by this foul attack, Oliviawas temporarily reinforced by the enemy, Roxanna, who tittered,"Who is this little number you've been keeping up your sleeve,without letting Mother know, Hay? Doing the young Italian wrecksalong with the old Italian ruins, are you?"

He stated, with just the ludicrous touchy dignity that bothOlivia and Roxy had meant to stir up in him, "Miss Stretti is ayoung girl I met casually at dinner. She doesn't even speakEnglish."

"Isee!" said Olivia and "I see!" said Roxy,with feminine derision that wiped him out. And so, havingpunished him for introducing them to each other, the twopuritanical and jeeringly righteous ladies turned murderouslyupon each other.

"You're not staying long in Florence are you, Miss Eldritch?"Olivia said caressingly.

("And she pretended first not to remember Roxy's name!")

But Roxy snatched off the first skirmish. She put on, not thedamning, insinuating cordiality of Olivia but the more dangerouspose of never posing; she was as simple and frank as Satan. "Ireally don't know how long I'll be here, Dr. Lomond. Oh, yes, Iknow your name so well. Hay was telling me what a fine scholaryou are, and how you've helped him, the poor darling, helplessamateur, understand something of Florence. But me, I'm simply asketchy newspaper hack, and I reckon I'll be lucky if I ever asmuch as learn Florence's last name."

"Last . . .? Oh, yes--yes . . . You'll be going on to Rome, nodoubt. I'm sure you'll want to take maybe four or five days inRome. It's an extremely important focal point."

"Yes, I think I read that somewhere," said Roxy, mostplain-faced and obedient. "You feel so, too? Then I'll have totake a quick look at the place, I guess."

More sweetly than ever, from Olivia: "I suppose you're stayingat the Grand or the Excelsior, here in Florence? A poor studenton a scholarship, like me--I confess I do envy you richjournalists."

Roxy didn't take it; she didn't blurt that she was poor andjobless; she said rustically, "I guess I'm just a lucky girl. ButI don't know as I'll stay on at the Excelsior. My privatebathroom is pretty fair there--black marble and a crocus-yellowtub, but I don't know--they couldn't give me a dressing-room witha big-enough toilet table to set out all my cosmetic bottles--youdo get into such a naughty habit of buying cut-glass flasks inParis, so amusing to amble along the Rue de la Paix and the dearold Champs and pick up exclusive perfumes. Of course, in myprofession, having to meet prime ministers and generals andatomic scientists and handsome movie stars so intimately, andreally important historians, I have to have a decent placeto chat with them."

Olivia was not routed. "Naturally, my dear. Such interesting,important work. And you shouldn't feel especially inferior withthem, or so humble."

"I--don't!"

("Are two women who like the same man, or who have oppositepolitical faiths, always bitches to each other when they meet? Ormerely usually?")

"Quite right, quite right, Miss Eldritch. Perhaps thesedignitaries get something of a fresh, breezy point of view frommeeting you. And now, Hayden, I must trot off to my room. TheMinistry of Education, in Rome, has asked for my opinion on somesecret documents about Charles VIII that have just beendiscovered. I'll leave you and Miss Eldritch to enjoy talkingabout your neighbors in Newlife. If I don't see you again, MissEldritch, I hope you will have a very enjoyable journey to Rome.Good night!"

"That woman," said Roxanna, "that woman--that woman is--she'sa knockout. She knows how to make up that mahogany skin of hersso it looks slick. Even with a crooked nose and too small a mouthand a wrinkly forehead and ears like a rabbit, she manages tolook quite beautiful."

"Now you . . ."

"And without any training except bossing a schoolroom foryears and years, she makes like real royalty. The boarding-housequeen! What a lucky boy you are! When she gets you back home, theBradbins will take to her like a duck to water. She has theirsame stunt of making you feel that if you disagree with them,you're not only a fool--you ought to see a doctor."

Hayden was tired of their war; he had seen only too much ofsuch delightful business in Caprice's opinion of every prettywoman newly arrived in Newlife. He said, affectionately, "Roxy, Iappeal to you as an old friend and neighbor . . ."

"Yes?"

"To shut up."

"Oh!"

"I'm extraordinarily fond of you, and always have been, and Ihope to give you a good time seeing Florence--with the assistanceof Olivia, who knows more about it than sixteen tourists like youand me put together. So when you and she get the posing andprancing and pawing the earth over, we'll all be happy and almostgrown-up."

"Okay, Chief!"

"And I'll introduce you to her friend, and mine, LorenzoLundsgard, who's a scholar and a smart lecturer and a footballhero and a Hollywood actor and a big handsome brute and asophisticated European and a friendly Yankee all puttogether--and he loves redheads."

"That vision," stated Roxanna, "you got out of a book. He'sAbelard and Heloise, that's who he is, and he's dead. I've seenhis tomb in Père-Lachaise." She rose.

"I'll take you home, Roxy. I have a little car."

"No, honestly, sweetie; I told you! I'm not going to sponge onyou. I want to walk home and begin to learn this town. All I wantis a tip on a job. Will you ask Mrs. What's-her-name about ittomorrow?"

"Dodsworth? I certainly shall. Roxy, it's nice to have youhere! Extremely!"

"Thanks, dear. And I'll quit picking on your Mexican sugarpie."

"Splendid."

"It was too easy! Good night, Wonderful!"

Olivia came to his room that evening and attacked at once.

"Who is this little fly-by-night Eldritch piece,really, aside from your having known her--as a clerk inthe Five-and-Ten, I imagine--in your Colorado wilderness?"

"You know perfectly that she was a friend of my wife andmyself, just a little younger, and she is a newspaperman ofstanding."

"Have you been keeping her up your sleeve all the time you'vebeen in Europe?"

"You know I haven't." He was grave, unsquabbling. "I havealways liked her and honored her. She is gallant and a littletouching in her ambition to be something more than a jollypirate. No, I do not plan to flirt with her. No, I have not doneso in the past--except in that she is so radiant and well roundedand highly touchable thatno normal man could look at herwithout being a little fatuous and lively. . . . Oh, Olivia, it'shard enough for us to stay infatuated without asking someoutsider to come in and think up good ways of making usmiserable!"

"That's what Isay! This Eldritch number!"

"I didn't mean her. I meant Lorenzo--Lancelot. I do worshipyou--I think. Don't let's letanybody come between us!Let's quit this childish, 'You broke that engagement so I'llbreak this one and teach you a lesson.' Both of us! Let's becontent with love. Let's not tamper with the gift of God!"

Instantly she rose to her passionate affection of the past,crying, "No! We mustn't! We've been so close! Oh, people alwaysbecome traitors to love. It's so simple and tremendous that theirmean little minnows of souls can't stand the glory!"

Despite the danger of the practically ubiquitous Mrs. Manse,despite the charms of Roxanna and the manly Mr. Lundsgard andTosca Stretti, they embraced each other with hungry sighing,almost weeping over the perils they had now conquered.

Next morning, less shining of wing and slightly irritable whenPerpetua was late bringing in his coffee and rolls and marmalade,Hayden wondered why it might not be an inspired notion to get--totry to get--Olivia to hand over her job in Lundsgard's office toRoxanna, together with all her rights, privileges and interestsin the said Lundsgard.

But that would be a dirty trick to play on Roxy, aside fromthe fact that Olivia would see them both damned first. So hetelephoned to Mrs. Samuel Dodsworth.

Mrs. Dodsworth was a woman equally kind and efficient. ForRoxanna she could find no school post but she did ferret out aposition as chauffeur, reader, masseuse, servant-firer andlistener to anecdotes about deceased spouse and successfulnephews, to the rich Mrs. Orlando Weepswell, and there Roxannahad a suite and a maid and a slight paralysis of the auditorynerves.

Roxy, with Hayden, met Nat Friar, at a bar, and the twomissioners of American irreverence formed a pious alliance. AsRoxy expressed it, "Uncle Nat and I sure clicked."

To Nat, beauty was a dynamic force, culture was morerevolutionary than war, the product of the artist (though not theartist himself and his mistresses and bank account) was to bestudied with reverence, and the more he held this gospel, themore impatiently did Nat hear the adorers who gabbled or gurgledor wheezed about the arts; who capitalized Beauty and Culturealong with their social positions.

If Roxanna could never have Nat Friar's knowledge nor hisgruff reverences, she had even more horrible synonyms for theword "fake," and Nat was grateful. When Hayden went by himself toNat's villa, he often found Roxanna perched there, cross-leggedon the couch, being cheery with Nat and Ada Baker.

In Florence, Roxanna, being in a state of repentance andpoverty, did not see any of Sadie Lurcher's international set,glittering like broken glass edges, sharp as broken glass,unpleasant under the teeth as broken glass. They do not findFlorence "smart," nor do they often remain. For the most part,Hayden judged, Roxanna associated with that borderlineassortment, the "American Students," of whom some were frugal andstudious, and some were shaggy, drunken, late-walking andfloridly abnormal or given to a confusion about private interestsin wives.

In general they were less noisy and self-advertising thantheir cousins in Paris, and Hayden felt that Roxanna was a coltnow broken of loco-weed.

His introduction of his quasi-cousin, Roxy, to Lundsgard wasoperatic and a success.

He had invited Roxy, Lundsgard and Olivia to dine with him atthe Cantina de' Pazzi (you will not find it under that name), inthe basement of the venerable Palazzo Suoli. Under massivearches, the basement, clattery with dishes and the delightedchatter of tourists, wanders off into circular stone cubicleswhich hint of ancient tortures. The walls, scurfy with old blood,are coy now with travel posters, bull-fighter costumes fromLondon sweatshops and paintings of carnivals in Venice--you werenever quite sure whether it was Venice, California, or its bawdyolder sister. To complete the Cantina's charm for tourists, themanagement had ordered that bread sticks and free colored postcards be displayed on the tables nightly before the guestsarrived.

As Hayden and Roxanna waited there--she had refused more thanone cocktail--they saw Olivia and Lundsgard, coming in from theiroffice work. Roxy's lips lifted in an arch of delight atLundsgard, and she crooned, "Oh, buy him for me, will you, CousinHay?"

And truly this Viking Lorenzo was something to enchant amaiden: broad-shouldered and his face all one beam of lovingintelligence and conscious power and masculine resolution. He washatless, his heroic head well back and his flaxen hair a coronet.With his sports jacket and gray open shirt, he had a purple andyellow Florentine silk scarf and, as he came near, on onemasterful hand Roxy must have seen a vast opal ring.

"Golly, that's a lot of man in one consignment," sighedRoxanna.

Olivia was determined to be agreeable. She gurgled to herenemy, "How's the job going?" and even called her "Roxanna." AndLundsgard as boisterously greeted her, "Welcome to our nicelittle city, Miss Eldritch and, speaking as a veteran here, may Iannounce that it hasn't seen anything cuter than you since Dantetried to make Be-at-triss. Roxanna, wemoriturus,salute thee!"

("Olivia is right; he really will popularize learning in theStates, though of course he'll kill it on the way.")

Roxanna was gushing to Lundsgard, "You don't look as ifCulture and Florence have stunted your boyish growth!"

He smiled on her as though she were a poor but worthy woman towhom he was giving thousands of dollars, dollar by dollar. "Roxy,the sneaking fact is that I'm not cultured. I can teach thatstuff, because I like college youngsters and I realize that allthey want, or ever need, is to get a smattering of art andhistory, so when they become docs or lawyers or manufacturers,they won't look ignorant. But I'm just a funnel, and with allyour interviews, you've probably got ten times as much realinside dope on these flyblown European countries as I'll everget."

Roxanna answered as benevolently as he.

"Olivia was only too darn kind. I've never really done any biginterviews--just real-life stories like interviews with Parisbartenders on do Yankee tourists prefervol au vent orpickled pigs' feet. No, you're the goods on theculture--apparently."

Till now Roxy had been a true woman canvasser for the LorryParty, and Olivia had difficulty in looking companionable whenLundsgard turned a shoulder on her and leaned into Roxanna. Butwith noticeably less reverence, Roxanna went on and Haydenthought he smelled malice:

"But you haven't been a professor all the time, have you,Lorenzo?"

"No, no. Lotta strings to my bow."

"You were in Hollywood?"

"Don't know as the L. A. papers raved much about it, but yes,I did a little ham acting."

"I'll bet all the girls hounded you for autographs."

This was pleasing to the great Lorenzo and astonishing toHayden. He had never thought of that. He had never known any onewhose autograph was sought after, who was so beautiful or cleverthat those fetish-seekers and magnified clinkers and generalnuisances called autograph-hounds would ever course after him.But Lorenzo took his own tremendousness for granted, and withgenial democracy he admitted:

"Oh, they used to ask for my fist now and then."

"Little girls, I meant--junior misses' size--twelve tofourteen."

Lorenzo was huffy. "No, not just junior misses! I've had somedoggone beautiful, rich women ask me for an autograph!"

"I'll bet. Seriously, Lorenzo, I was going to ask you for onemyself and please, pretty please, give me one now before I forgetit! If it wouldn't bore you? I want to keep it with Gene Tunney'sand André Gide's and all those."

Hayden noted that the sheet which Roxy managed to find in herhandbag and present to Lundsgard for his signature was a billwhich did not look receipted. Lundsgard signed it with large,rolling L's and looked delighted. Roxy purred. Olivia lookedsour, then tried to look amused, and in a great-lady manner shechuckled "Lorry, I'm afraid I missed something. It never occurredto me to ask for your autograph--except as I do have yourinitials signed to so many gay little notes."

"I'll bet you have!" snarled Roxanna and went over toLundsgard complete.

They agreed that they were shrewd, generous, swift-movingAmericans, with no nonsense. When Olivia tried to be lofty withtheir lowness and, to keep the debate fair, Hayden joined Olivia,the two hard-riding highwaymen teased them for the "solemncholyway you listen to a lot of snooty French and English and Germancranks and fall for it when they claim you can write better witha pen than you can with a typewriter."

Lundsgard seemed to be expanding with appreciation, and he hada good deal of buoyant hydrogen in his chest to expand. Roxy washis pal. Perhaps he had been bored by Olivia's elegance of oldivory, and bored even by the fierce, channeled ardor with whichshe could vary her level coldness; perhaps, for a time, he mightfind the tartness of the rosy apple that was Roxanna spicier thanthe richness of Olivia's pear. So Hayden meditated, but hehimself found Roxy's generous enthusiasm of voice somewhat flatand loud and quacking in competition with Olivia's deepmelodies.

It was when Lundsgard was most admiring himself in Roxy'smirror and most enjoying an advertisement of his friendlinesswith Prince Ugo Tramontana that the slippery minx twistedaway.

"Oh, yes," confided Lundsgard, "I've become quite a buddy ofHis Highness and I like . . ."

"A non-royal prince is not a Highness," Roxy cackled. "Don'tbe like that, and let 'em see the patched overalls you still wearunder the luscious doctoral robe, dear."

"Why, you little stinker! Me--overalls? Lissen! I don't wantto boast, but I pay my tailor in Hollywood two hundred andseventeen bucks a suit!" roared the outraged Lorenzo. "And--youand your alleged knowledge of protocol and titles and that junk!Let me tell you Ugo is a mighty good intimate of mine and I hangaround that grand old palazzo of his like I would around theFaculty Club and--everything's worn out and the velvet worn andthose gilt mirrors got liver patches on 'em, but he's got moredoggone medieval paintings and manuscripts by Poliziano (I guessit is) and old swords than you can shake a stick at, but hethinks I'm swell, and he says I got what he calls a new vision,and he likes to try his theories out on me. Hesaidso!"

Roxanna restored amity and even increased their alliance bybubbling, "And I'll bet that's true. He knows you aren't tied bya lot of bum traditions. Sure. He's glad to have a smart scholarthat at the same time's husky andhuman like youaround."

Nobly pleased, Professor Lundsgard said modestly, "It seemslike he does."

Roxanna did not strike again till after dinner, when Lundsgardflamboyantly lighted a huge Havana, and she muttered, "My, my,what a big man that cigar is smoking! I'll bet Prince Ugo gets topanting when you smoke those El Imperialses around thepalace!"

For once, Olivia giggled and Lundsgard looked wounded, butagain it did not take much of Roxy's gamine art to restore him toself-admiration, to delight in his little pal.

Hayden thought, "What a stupid, humorless, touchy oaf that manis! Once Olivia's fling is over--and I think perhaps it is now,when she's seen him tossed around by a crazy juggler likeRoxy--I'll be able to snatch Olivia back from him, and I can holdher--for always? I suppose so."

He was sorry for Lundsgard, driven in Roxanna's tinsel reins.Perhaps Olivia could not avenge Evelyn Hoxler, but Roxanna woulddo so, blithely and tenderly and viciously. Poor Lorenzo, shakinga sceptre hung with jester's bells!

"I think we should all be going home," said Olivia,tightly.

"See you to your bachelor digs, Rox?" said Lundsgard, the deftman of the world.

"Uh-huh," said Roxy.

"Hay-den! Let's go!" said Olivia.

Hayden, especially loaned by kindness of Dr. Olivia Lomond forone evening, was dining with Roxanna among the students atCamillo's. He was not pleased by the contemptuous hardness whichRoxanna seemed again to be putting on. She was slightly tooshowy, in her old green dress with a white turban possiblymodeled on the streamlined yet haremlike Marchesa Valdarno and astring of jade beads; she was slightly too harsh andambition-vaunting as she rattled, "I'm getting my second wind. Ithink before long I'll feel like leaving your nice littleFlorence."

"What do you mean by 'little'! It's even bigger than St. Paul,Minnesota, or Omaha, Nebraska. Why, it's about as big asDenver!"

"Our Nathan Hale! I am sorry I have but one life to give forstudying thepredella on the right of the third picture ofthe altar piece in the third chapel of the left aisle of thesixty-seventh most important ecclesiastical structure in oursacred Flow-rence! You're as bad a faker as Lorry Lundsgard!"

"Oh. How are you and your Dr. Tarzan progressing?"

"I may give him a tumble, if I don't get the hell out of thisbackwater. But as I was saying, pretty soon I may get going nowand leave my set of nursing-bottles for Mother Weepswell, and doa lot of freelance stories. Have I got ideas now! A piece aboutyoung Italian noblemen, like Roberto Tramontana, who're bustedand who've cheerfully gone to work in garages or any other honestlabor. Heh? Heh? How about it, Uncle Hayden?"

"Roxy darling, don't get too enterprising again. I like youmore when you're gentle."

("Is this young woman nothing more than Caprice with apassport?")

"And I like you better when you're more brash and neighborly,Hay. You're in danger of becoming another of these erudite oldgentlemen living lonely in a villino, so dreadfully mild andwell-washed and reticent, knowing all about some old hellhoundlike Malatesta Baglioni and nothing about President Truman; areservoir that has all the facts and don't know what any of themsignify. Uncle Nat Friar but wrapped in oiled silk. And worse,you could lose all your democracy here. Oh, you never were a guyto run out and kiss the postman or make the hired girl have hersupper with the folks, but you did think the postman and hiredgirl might get married and have a kid who'd be a better lawyerthanyour kid--if you'd only had one, you and Caprice,poor darling!

"But here, you talk ofcontadini, of farmers, as ifthey couldn't ever be educated like you and me. And like allAmericans, you always overdo. Talk about me overdoing the hustle!You feel you can't monkey with Italian history at all unless youbecome a professor of it, whichGott soll behüten,you never will. If you were building bungalows with sweety-pieyellow bathrooms, you'd dream about waffles. If you're learningItalian, you try to talk same to Heinie tourists and Svensktrippers. Okay--but don't overdo your underdoing our ole Americandemocracy, pal!

"You're inmuch more peril than I am with my play atdissipation, which I can chuck so easy.Your danger isvirtuous prissiness, and that's a nastier vice than doublemartinis. Pete's sake, Hay, don't listen to your old Italiangorillas roaring so you can't hear the big, sweet hell of a roarour Americans have always put up, too:

"Casey Jones at the throttle and the old engine moanin'! Boundaway for the Wide Missourai! Banjo on my knee. Frankie and Johnnyroot-a-toot-tootin'! In the evening by the moonlight, the oldfolks singing! Boy! Am I proud of our own troubadours! And youforgetting them for English skylarks and some dinky little thinsong by Petrarch about a girl he never even made!"

Vigorously, from Hay, "I don't forget them! Never! Sitting inSan Miniato, looking at the altar-screen, I caught myself hummingCasey Jones! Besides, you're a true Westerner; you'veheard some Old Timers sing hallelujahs. But most American kidstoday have only learned our ballads, rejoiced in our owntradition, when they've heard 'em--if theycould hear 'emover the smack of their chewing gum, on the radio, rollicked outby some ferocious Nevada thousand-dollar-a-week singing cowboywho was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and learned his NativeWestern American melodies in the glee club at the Southern NewJersey School of Accountancy. Or the fat man who gets up andsings 'em with the soloist at a New York night club--he's aNative Cal-y-for-ny-an born in Lithuania!

"Besides--now, for the first time, America belongs to theworld, not just to America, and Casey Jones has to take hischance against the skylark and Laura and Roland and Nicolette andall of them, and not complain, as you dofor him, ifFrançois Villon drowns him out! Casey's been a sensitiveplant too long--sheltered by the Wide Missourai!"

"Okay, okay! Slap Walt Whitman up against Gilbert and Sullivanand see if he's so cute. But if you're going to be so darnedworld-conscious, Hay, you got to get out of Florence--I mean, theLimey-Yankee Florence. It's such a hick village! It gossips worsethan Bison Park ever thought of! Tessie Weepswell and SamDodsworth and even Mrs. D. gossip about you all day long. Willyou marry Olivia? (And may she develop the bots!) If you stop onthe Tornabuoni and talk to some old rabbit for two minutes atnoon, the Colony has complete details by one-thirty and talksabout your new romance all afternoon.

"And then that ratty bunch of American pansies that sit at thesame bar, every afternoon, out on the sidewalk, exhibiting theirbeauties to any visiting firemen fairies that may happen to hittown. Provincial? Good Lord, those serious young men of talentare so busy, just like the gang at the Newlife Bonanza Poolroom,talking all day, that they don't even get around to see theUffizi Gallery once a month.

"No, my boy. You either disappear intoItalianFlorence--I've heard there used to be one--or else go on to Parisor Zurich or Newlife, Colorado, or one of those universal cities.And take your O-ly-vya with you. Andtry not to push heroff an Alp on the way!"

Hayden said, "Well . . ."

Roxanna might, he thought uncomfortably, be right. He mightdrift here into a negligent snobbishness in which only personswith art-vocabularies or titles or official posts would seem tomaster. He ought, he thought, to see more of Roxy and get moreactively into soul-saving; save hers from the suave brutality offemale careerism--save himself from the fussy brutality ofdamning Perpetua every time she moved a book on his readingtable.

To an ironic Olivia, late that evening, after a good-naturedbut uncompromising parting with Roxanna, he explained that hereally had to be neighborly with his old friend Roxy and not letthe poor waif stumble into alien pitfalls alone.

"You mean she'll land softer if you stumble with her?" saidOlivia. "Go ahead. . . . Heavens, Hayden! Do you suppose for onemoment I could be jealous of a street Arab like your Roxanna?Don't insult me! Spendall your evenings--and nights,too--with her, if it amuses you."

Olivia was too willing. He wondered, a thousand times, if thehigh spirits of Roxanna had not already enticed Lundsgard awayfrom Olivia; if that lady, born to Byzantine courts andtrafficking for Hellenic manuscripts in Cyprus, was becomingsilkenly double-faced.

As a matter of fact his two or three dinners alone withRoxanna were but mildly devoted to her endangered morals. Itproved that Roxy had, as most diners-out had not, as Oliviasniffily had not, his own trick of telling himself exclamatorystories about all of his fellow diners at a restaurant, and thatwas a trick well shared and inducing common excitement. At theOliviero, most cosmopolitan restaurant in town, they picked out aFrench diplomat (he was probably a Milanese manufacturer), aChinese general (probably Burmese). They looked sidewise,inconspicuously but intensely, at a quarreling young couple, andspeculated, "I wonder if we hadn't better go over and tell himthat his girl has too rocky a jaw, for all her funny nose, andhe'd better duck before she shackles him for life?"

Always it was what Roxanna called "good fun." And then shewould infuriate him by returning to the charge that he wasbecoming a frail old scholar-hermit, and she would defend Lorenzoas a good fellow who had antagonized Hayden only by being his ownhonest, rollicking self.

At the next dinner out of the three, Roxanna said toLundsgard, derisively, "How's all your lovely wives keeping,Loraccio?"

"You mean my girl friends here? Why, sweetness, I haven't gotany except you and Livy, who're both gone on that frozen-facedhermit, Hay."

"No, Professor, I don't mean us.Wives, I said!"

Lundsgard's "I dunno whacha talking about" was blurred andmost unprofessional.

"It's none of my business and I don't care a hoot, but I'm areporter, and don't ever let them tell you I'm not a good one.Anyway, a busy one. You're always explaining to everybody thatyou've never slipped into wedlock. You were just mean, when youwere a rosy-cheeked young instructor with goldie tresses, to somejuicy little cricket named Bessie, and she canned you for yourhe-man tyranny.

"But I've been snooping--pumping some of the American studentshere that you've been chummy with. And I wrote a few letters to ascript-writer that I know in Hollywood. And I am now able toinform you--it may be no news to you, Lorry, but it will interestLivy: you were married, bell, book and neon lights, to twodifferent cuties and got divorced by one after two years and by'tother after eighteen months--grounds, in both cases, amnesiaabout who you were really married to. Oh, it's okay, but I justfeel we'll all be happier, as simple, trusting American girls, ifwe could expect a consignment of home truth now and then!"

Olivia was rigidly furious.

"I'm sure I don't know why we should hear all this. Mr.Lundsgard is my employer, and nothing else. I have no slightestinterest in his private affairs of any sort!"

It was Lundsgard who was surprisingly undisturbed.

He snorted, "So you took enough interest in poor old Lorry toreally get busy and find out about him, heh? Yuh, I guess youryarn is more or less true, Rox. I never could see why I shouldbother you folks with my troubles, but believe me, I could a taleunfold of a couple of the nastiest little tramps you ever heardof, if I hadn't made it an iron-clad rule to never yap about mywounds but just bear 'em in silence. But I will say," and helooked at Roxanna and then at Olivia as fondly as though theywere two lovely little breakfast sausages and he a hungry hero,"that an awful lot of women hung around hoping to comfort me,after the obsequies."

"Did they, big boy!" slashed Roxanna.

"Do you mind if we forget all of this and talk about somethingmore interesting?" grated Olivia.

Curiously, during the rest of that meal, Lundsgard looked mostfondly upon Roxanna, and argued down Olivia's evasive doubts whenRoxy announced that the one thing in the world she wanted to dowas to get invited to lunch with Sir Henry Belfont.

They all did go, as arranged and tourist-guided by Mr. HaydenChart.

They were only six at lunch: Sir Henry and Lady Belfont,Olivia and Roxanna, Hayden and Lundsgard, who had brought Roxannain a taxicab and who seemed, on landing, to be more gurglinglyintimate with Roxy than before her revelations of his multiplemarriages.

When Sir Henry found that Roxy was esteemed not only by theunimportant onlooker, Hayden, but by the favorite courtier,Professor Lundsgard, he was markedly attentive to her, andhonored her with a portentous discourse on American Womanhood.You gather that he did not think much of it.

Roxy listened pertly; Lady Belfont pointedly did not listen atall but, with small sharp eyes, examined Roxy and apparentlypassed her.

Yet after Sir Henry had accepted her and she should have puton the manners of a Belgravia governess, Roxanna was verynaughty. Sir Henry belched at her, "Gracious little lady, you arefortunate in being able to tarry for a while in the City of theLilies. Most of your dreadful American females who come here, souninvited--gauche schoolteachers and librarians and thelike--remain only twelve hours or a day or two, and scamper on toRome."

But Roxanna was not grateful for this implication of hersuperiority.

She took from an overdecorated spectacle case of Florentineleather-work, with golden scrolls on blue and sealbrown, and puton a pair of Hollywoodized tinted sun-glasses, huge andaggressive affairs with harlequin frames of pink plastic. Throughthese insulting portholes she stared at Sir Henry, and blatted,"Maybe the poor darlings of teachers haven't enough cash to stickit out here any longer, and they got to 'scamper.' Maybe they'dstay here for years, too, if they'd inherited a wad ofmoney."

Every one, but especially Sir Henry and perhaps Roxannaherself, seemed to consider her tone offensive. He gulped; hetried to forgive this curious campfollower of his favoriteLorenzo; and he sailed on:

"Conceivably that may be their melancholy plight, though Icannot understand why middle-class persons, particularly yourAmericans, should be privileged to come to our Florence at all.Such ecstasy, Miss Eldritch, is no part of our common rights,like bread and beer; it is a delightful good fortune which theprankish gods may bestow or deny at their will, quiteunaccountably.

"But all of your vast, marvelous country, Miss Eldritch, isfull of false claims and assertions and astounding optimism.Children over there invariably address their fathers not withobedient reverence but--I shudder--'Hya, Pop'! Andthem, Ifancy, even your kind heart could scarcely categorize as 'poordarlings'! Eh?"

Said Roxy, "In the first place, mostly they don't say it, andif they did, it would just show they liked their dads enough towant to be chummy with them."

For a time, then, Roxanna was not offensive. But when SirHenry had rambled, "When we consider that there once existed aRaphael, the insanities of these contemporary artists become notmerely mawkish but blasphemous," then Roxy struck again. Sheturned her impertinent Hollywood sun-glasses on Belfont, and shepiped, "Maybe that's what the old boys said about Rafe, too, whenhe was beginning."

Sir Henry looked stricken. Lady Belfont, behind the mild harembars of a tiny lace handkerchief, seemed to be giggling. Haydenwas definitely impatient with Roxy for her pointless rudeness; hewas definitely sorry for Sir Henry, whom he could see now as apathetic old actor getting his first hisses and trying to takethem gallantly.

Hayden thought, "The man is a bore and a snob. He's built up asocial position to which he has to sacrifice everything. He hasbuilt a jail and shut himself up in it. He can never have any funat all--never can laugh or talk easily or be flippant or go to amovie and dine with poor people, lest he be seen. Poor, timid,wheezing Pekingese in the body of a mastiff! I am extremelyannoyed with Roxanna, as much for her pretentious spectacles asfor her sauciness--which certainly does no credit to the goodmanners that we do have in Newlife. A splendid missionary of hateshe is! Mark Twain's bumptious rustic, his Innocent Abroad. Stillwith us!"

Sir Henry was not enfeebled by Roxy's impertinence, butangered. It was a long time since any one had dared to make smallof such a formidable monument of guineas capped with a baronetcy.This was indeed his notion of blasphemy. But he counterattackedRoxy with stately tolerance for such small female bugs:

"My dear young lady, I agree that had he existed in yourAmerica, Raffaello would have been denounced in his own day. Iquite understand that--quite. I am not shocked but only grievedby the irreverence and boorishness that is, perhaps, to beexpected from such a lusty young giant of a country. For, indeed,some of my own relatives belong to you good American people."

Then, to the horror of everybody except Lady Belfont, whoselips danced, and of the butler, who slapped a napkin over hismouth and fled from the room, Roxy demanded, "Sir Henry, don'tall of your own relatives belong to us good American people?"

"I beg your pardon!"

"Including your father and mother?"

"I beg your pardon!"

"I heard so many interesting things about you from anewspaperman who used to be your secretary. You firedhim--remember?--for laughing when a dinky gilt chair busted underyou. He was left stranded--bad. This fellow, the rat, he told methat you never saw England or the Continent till you werefourteen. You were born in Ohio and your Grampa Belfont--if thatwas the name--started the family fortunes during our AmericanCivil War by selling adulterated drugs and shoddy uniforms to theNorth and South equally."

Sir Henry was paralyzed. The thing was so monstrous that eventhe competent Hayden, the managerial Lundsgard were paralyzed, asRoxy went smilingly on:

"This ex-secretary said it cost you sixteen years of living inKent and London and getting snubbed practically every hour, andthen forty-five thousand pounds in cash, to buy a seat inParliament and finally an unpaid job as a baronet. But he said,this beast, that he guessed that to the miners who work in yourKentucky coal mines it was worth every shilling. But thistattle-tale couldn't possibly have been right, now could he!"

Sir Henry with his death pangs just slightly eased, croaked,"He certainly could not."

"No, indeed. For instance: how could he know exactly how muchyou paid for your title? Maybe they stuck you much more thanforty-five thousand pounds. And I do want to say how wise I thinkyou were to move on to Italy. In England, you must have found itso hard to get away with the pose of being English."

Sir Henry rose, but it was not Roxanna whom he was denouncing;it was astonishingly his admirer and fellow fraud, ProfessorLorenzo Lundsgard:

"Lundsgard, you plotted this outrage, sir. You brought in thiswoman, whom I shall certainly have the police investigate. And asforyou, sir, I shall write this very afternoon to thepresident of Cornucopia Films--of which I happen to ownfifty-seven percent--recommending that they give up their plan tomake a Medici picture, or any other amateurish nonsense that youmay plan, ever, and denounce you to your lecture agents as ahalf-witted booby. Good day, ladies and gentlemen."

He marched out, followed by a cattishly smiling Lady Belfont.The butler hurried back in, to take the better silver out withhim for safeguarding.

Lundsgard screamed, "My God, we got to do something!"

Roxy said comfortably, "Not me! I've always been hankering toblow up that pompous old shyster, after what this kid, my friend,told me about him in London."

"Be quiet, Roxanna," Hayden said sharply.

Olivia, with unexpected independence, stated, "Roxanna wasinexcusably rude and vulgar, but it is our fault for bringing herhere. We should have understood that she would not know even thefirst duties of being a decent guest."

Roxanna cried, "Hey, now look here, you!" but Olivia iced herout with, "Although I am quite indifferent to what Mr. Belfontthinks of me. In my group, we consider him an incompetentdilettante."

Lundsgard was raging, "You've all got to put your headstogether and help me--and you, Roxy, I'm certainly going tothrottle you! I'm ruined, if Cornucopia Films welch on me. Didn'tyou realize that, Roxy, you dangerous little fool?"

"Oh yes, Lor-en-zo, I had some idea of it. I've just sort ofbeen resenting your idea I would be an easy conquest. I'm not around-heel like Livy."

Olivia was a leopard leaping. "You little vixen! And I am nota . . . I don't even know what the vile word means!"

"How come it makes you so sore then?"

Hayden gravely interposed--though he too was being forced upto a plane of screaming: "I think you've done enough harm,Roxanna--and don't be so smug about your efficiency as aguttersnipe. We are justifying Sir Henry in his hatred of usAmericans--of his own countrymen! We must leave this house."

"You simply got to come to my office and help me fix thisthing up," besought Lundsgard. "You can't see me busted likethis. We'll all tell Sir Henry that Roxanna is hysterical. Wejust learned it--we've thrown her right smack out on her back,bang, for keeps. . . ."

To point it all up, the butler came back to inform Lundsgardthat his taxicab (which Lundsgard had never ordered) waswaiting.

As he drove Olivia to Lundsgard's office in the small car,Hayden imagined from blocks away that he could hear Roxy andLundsgard quarreling in their cab, but he had little time forimaginings. He was occupied with listening to Olivia, and Oliviahad an eloquence she never got out of Machiavelli.

"This whole boresome incident has been a revelation to me,Hayden. I saw what a cowering coward Lorry is--or Lawrence orOley or whatever he is. I'm not sure but that he's even worsethan your shrieking, hair-pulling young fishwife, Roxanna."

"Now, now, she isn't a . . ."

"She is too, and you know it! And I want you to be as honestabout this as I am; I want you to admit your blindness, as Icertainly admit mine, now. The veil of sensuality has been liftedfrom before my eyes; that horrible, sooty veil. I see now--I wasa fool and an ingrate not to see it before. It's you, not I, whoare the artist-scholar. Hayden dear, you, not Lorry, who are thetrue Magnificent, without flashy banners.

"For a while I fell into an illusion--it doubtless came fromovermuch reading of medieval chronicles and ballads, but still,it was childish and inexcusable--an illusion that a man ought tobe obviously splendid: the knight crusader, daring and poetic,the Duke of Urbino, the battle-breaker, the patron of poets andartists; powerful, cloaked in brocade, belted with a great sword,surrounded by medieval color and all the respect of a medievalcourt.

"I dreamed, in this schoolgirl dream, that he should travelwide and swiftly, have his commands obeyed swiftly; beextravagant and sometimes ruthless, and forever uplift the wholegroveling world by his gorgeous example.

"What a sentimental fool I was! I see that that kind of anidea is more likely to produce a pompous fraud like Belfont or apilfering clown like Lundsgard than a man likeyou, who isstrong enough to be willing to be quiet!"

She kissed him tremendously, to his considerable discomfiturewhile tacking in the topolino among the trucks, cars,motorcycles, vespas--motorcycles with platforms and tinaprons--bicycles, scooters, pedestrians reading the newspaperswhile suicidally strolling, which so interestingly complicate thetraffic of Florence. But these dangers did not dismay him so muchas the thought that he was caught for good, and that the worldwhich Olivia would now permit him to see would not be verywide.

"You know, I'm not always so quiet," he fretted. "And I'm notsure I can ever do much with the Magnificence role, with orwithout banners. Olivia, I wonder--does it ever occur to you thatmaybe we're making a mistake? Perhaps we're both too stubborn tobe married."

"Nonsense! We'll both learn."

"But can we? Just because youare so capable, you'llalways be pretty independent."

"I suppose our hoyden friend Roxanna is your idea ofpliability!"

"Oh, she's a pirate, but same time, she never fools herself,as you and I do. I admire her a lot. Olivia! Let's not be toosure about our marriage. It scares me a little."

"Not me. You just do what I tell you to, and you'll behappy."

"Maybe!"

They parked the topolino at the Excelsior just as Roxanna andLundsgard were leaving their taxicab. They four went up in theelevator, but there were two English ladies in it, making thatapartment unsuitable for expert quarreling. Not till they hadentered Lundsgard's office, where Nat Friar sat with his large,dusty boots up on a desk, his rustic straw hat over his eyes,alternately reading a Dorothy Sayers thriller and Monnier'sLeQuattrocento, was Lundsgard able to attack:

"I don't know which of you two women is the worst slut and themost ungrateful!"

Hayden had achieved only a sharp, "We'll have no more of . .." when he was interrupted by Uncle Nat. As his boots banged downon the floor, Nat fussily poked his straw hat into a wastebasketand spoke:

"Lundsgard, I don't like your manner. Remember there aregentlemen present. By the way, before you discharge me, may I saythat I am leaving you for a job in a travel agency? I shall bepaid only one-fifth as much, but there I shall be doing nothingmore evil than to direct homeless travelers to corrugated beds.It may be that after a month I shall feel somewhat cleansed fromthe sin of having helped you to corrupt that great lady,Learning."

Angelo Gazza, the photographer, was just coming in and at himLundsgard shrieked,"You, anyway--you'refired!"

"Oh, no, I'm not! Professor Friar told me his plan to quit,and I'm rat number two. You, the big athlete, that thought hecould kick history around like a football! You're going to feelfunny when you get back to teaching schoolboys and tell 'em whata hit you were in Italy with all the princes and thecardinals--and see that not one of your students believesyou--ever. Blackboards again, and chalkdust and weekly themes!Addio, tutti! Ciao, Oley!"

The stricken Lundsgard pressed his eyes with his large,beringed hands and stood shaking, and from this spectacle of doomthey crept out in pity.

"I hate these renegades like ourselves," Nat Friar said toHayden, Olivia, Roxy, Angelo, "who triumph over less virtuousscoundrels like Lundsgard. We are so much less colorful. May Ibuy you all a last cognac? We shall toast the fallen idol. Itwill probably be the last toast that anybody will ever drink toMr. Lundsgard."

In the Piazza della Republica, shabby small boys were beggingand the old scavengers were picking up cigarette butts. All theumbrellas over the outdoor café tables had blossomed infront of Gilli's; the gentle violet-seller circulated and girlslaughed in peace.

"Can Olivia and Iever leave Florence?" Haydenwondered.

From the café, Hayden and Olivia and Roxanna walkedaway, but with Roxy only tagging.

Olivia was holding Hayden's arm. She sighed, "Ohhhh!"--ahungry sound. She mourned, "I don't know how many kinds of a fooland bully I've been, but I think I've paid for all of them. Lorrylooks at me now with such hatred; he makes me feel loose andcompromised. But you, my good angel, you'll never be treacherousas Lorry is--as I've been! You'll never take your obligationslightly. In your presence, I feel absolved and secure."

She held his arm the more tightly and as he managed anembarrassed glance at her, he saw that her forehead was serene,her eyes were clear and tender; she was angelic again andsplendid and desirable.

He felt manacled by her lovely ivory hand. How could he desertthis passionate woman whom he had helped to destroy, whom he musthelp to restore to her principalities?

But he ached for his solitary room and the sweet drudgery ofbooks and, after certain years of them, to venture onward to thebrazen sea of Arabia, the West Indian islands shining at dawn,the high lone whistling passes of the Himalayas. On suchunscheduled wandering, Olivia would never accompany him. Her lovewould encompass him, but bind him.

They were at the Palazzo Spizzi.

Roxanna caught up with them and proposed, "How about a dish oftea?"

With a remarkably chilly, "Not for me, thanks--perhaps Haydenwill care for one," Olivia curtly left them, went into thePalazzo.

"How about you?" Roxy hesitated.

"I'd love some," said Hayden, and they strolled on to a smalltea-shop off the Tornabuoni. As they sat down, Roxy sighed:

"I know I've already talked too much today, but one morething. I used to respect you so, Hay, for your dignity andhonesty. Now it kills me to see you turned into Livy'sstooge."

Hayden was working up to a denial, but Roxy clattered on:

"I loathe seeing you get all silent and intense again the wayyou used to be with Caprice. But I guess you must have it--youbleatingmartyr! When I get back to Newlife and themountains--that big, huge place where you look up to the horizon,where there's freedom to be ignorant of the ruling dynasty ofPiacenza, I'll think of you solemnly grinding away here, tryingto satisfy Professor Olivia! But I hope I'll have yourforgiveness for having plagued you, and for having been a pesttoday."

Roxy, on the wall-bench beside him, was suddenly crying, adefenseless and bewildered child. She spoke through sobs like thesobs of a child, hurt, broken, bewildered:

"Oh, darling Hay, I thought you'd all be delighted to have meshow up that old sergeant-major, Harry Belfont, today, and gethim off your necks!"

Hayden was trembling, but he tried to be hard-hearted. "It wasneedless and cruel of you. The old comedian is perfectlyharmless."

He was glad that a serving-table concealed them from the restof the tea-shop.

Roxy was still broken with sobbing as she stammered, "Maybehe's harmless but you all talk so's you'll impress him. I wantedto help you, even Livy. But then I saw you all hated me anddespised me for bawling him out--shanty Irish, flannel-mouth,nuisance!"

Roxy was crying hard now. He touched her shoulder and shemelted against him, she seemed to melt into him, to be one withhim. She was a familiar part of him and his own land. There was asweet wild smell about her, like sagebrush. He cried, "Why, I'min love with you, Roxy, and I always have been!"

"Didn't you know that? Did you have to go to Italy and readall about arquebuses and apses, to find that out?"

"Will you go with me to Burma and Brazil and Damascus?"

"Sure!"

He kissed Roxanna, very happily.

It was later, as tea prolonged into dinner, that he saidsadly, "But Roxy, I'm no good. I seem to honor women, and yet Ihelp to destroy them--Caprice and now Olivia."

"Sure you do. You let them use you and tyrannize over you. Nowoman that ever lived can stand that much privilege. I'm likelyto try it on, too, but maybe not, because I've been in love withyou too many years. You know something? Here's the real secret ofmy life:

"When you were an old man of eighteen, very handsome anddignified, like a secretary of state, you were rehearsing yoursalutatorian's essay for Commencement exercises, in the emptyauditorium of the Kit Carson High School, all by yourself--youthought you were. But I was curled up behind a row of seats inthe balcony, making myself very small and silent, sucking mylollypop in the utmost silence. I was an earnest young lady often, then. I meant to be a United States Senator, and you were mymodel. (You were to be President.)

"You carried on something wonderful; all about theInternational Court and how nice it would be if all the nationswould listen to you and learn about justice. It sounded swell! Ijust knelt there and said to myself, 'Some day I'm going to marrythat man, even if I have to follow him to Denver or evenMinneapolis.' I didn't count on Italy. That's how you slipped me!Dear Hay!"

"Dear Roxy!" he said earnestly.

But he had a worry.

"Now, I have to go tell Olivia, I suppose!"

Roxy said brightly, "Want me to do it for you?"

"Oh, no, Ithink I can manage it," groaned Hayden.

The wedding of Hayden and Roxanna--the civil service in theoffice of the kindly American Consul, and the religious serviceat St. James's church--was an Event, attended by all theAnglo-American Colony except Sir Henry Belfont.

Dr. Olivia Lomond was at the church, looking contented andsuperior. She was warmly on the arm of the chief foreign officialthen to be found in Florence: the newly appointed First AssistantAmerican Cultural Commissioner to Peru, a confident, beaming,success-radiating magnifico in morning clothes and Ascot tie. Hisname was Professor the Hon. Lorenzo O. Lundsgard, Ph. D.

They were in Rapallo.

"All right, we'll do that then, unless we want to change ourminds," said Roxanna. "Go home by way of Ceylon and India andJapan, if they'll let us in. Home! But if I ever catch yougetting to be successful, I'll snatch you back here, for a coursein humility. Maybe we came to Italy too late. We'll never speakthe lingo so naturally that we won't even notice we're speakingit. But there is something great here for us--so great because itis so quiet. The American Colonists in Florence are richer intheir hearts than the Men of Distinction back home that takethemselves so seriously selling whisky or lawsuits orcollege-alumni enthusiasm. Oh, darling, am I holding forth?"

"Yes--yes," amiably.

"Oh, dear! But you never help me. I suppose you have to beborn to it, to know how to beat women, and you weren't."

"I'll try."

"Look. When we get to Rome, are there any more presents we'llhave to buy? Last minute in Florence, I got a leather box forAunt Tib, and the rosary for Lizzie Edison and the linenluncheon-set for Mrs. Dr. Crittenham and a souvenir deck of cardsfor Bill and Jean Windelbank (won't we enjoy talking over Europewiththem!) and the Venetian glass and the blue-and-goldspectacle case for Mary Eliza Bradbin. It'll be such fun to seeher when she gets it!"

"Such fun"--he realized how often Roxanna said it, as hand inhand they walked through Ravenna. Even King Theodoric's Ariancathedral and the tomb of the Empress Honoria she found "suchfun," and he wondered if their sculptors had not also consideredthem "fun."

"Dear Roxy," he said, even in the sanctity of Dante'stomb.

Far up in the mountains behind Salerno, one light persistedwhile their steamer plodded southward from Naples, bound out forSmyrna and Alexandria.

Was it a light in the hut of a peasant or of some studioushermit-priest, a priest in that sacred land where Hayden hadknown defeat and glory, where he had begun to know himself?

"Do you think we might have one modest drink before we turnin?" said Roxanna.

"I think that might be possible, if the bartender iskind-hearted."

"The bartender is Italian," said Roxy, "and he speaks English,French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, Croatian and someArabic. His name is Fortunato, and he was born in Reggio Emilia,but his wife was born in Bari. He has two children, a girl ofseven and a son, six, and he likes Italian crossword-puzzles--heis such fun. He has a cousin in San Jose, California--GiuseppinaVespi of 1127 Citrus Court. She is married to an upholsterernamed Joe Murphy and they have two children. I am to send her apicture post card from Palermo. I'm sleepy. Let's have that drinkand then turn in."

"Splendid!" said Hayden.

THE END

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