Aaron’s Rod by D. H. Lawrence (page 7)

But he only says it to tease us,” he cried, shaking Lilly’s shoulder. “He cares more than we do for his own way of loving. Come along, don’t try and take us in. We are old birds, old birds,” said Argyle. But at that moment he seemed a bit doddering.

“A man can’t live,” said the Italian, “without an object.”

“Well–and that object?” said Lilly.

“Well–it may be many things. Mostly it is two things.–love, and money. But it may be many things: ambition, patriotism, science, art–many things. But it is some objective. Something outside the self. Perhaps many things outside the self.”

“I have had only one objective all my life,” said Argyle. “And that was love. For that I have spent my life.”

“And the lives of a number of other people, too,” said Lilly.

“Admitted. Oh, admitted. It takes two to make love: unless you’re a miserable–“

“Don’t you think,” said Aaron, turning to Lilly, “that however you try to get away from it, if you’re not after money, and can’t fit yourself into a job–you’ve got to, you’ve got to try and find something else– somebody else–somebody. You can’t really be alone.”

“No matter how many mistakes you’ve made–you can’t really be alone–?” asked Lilly.

“You can be alone for a minute. You can be alone just in that minute when you’ve broken free, and you feel heart thankful to be alone, because the other thing wasn’t to be borne. But you can’t keep on being alone. No matter how many tunes you’ve broken free, and feel, thank God to be alone (nothing on earth is so good as to breathe fresh air and be alone), no matter how many times you’ve felt this–it wears off every time, and you begin to look again–and you begin to roam round. And even if you won’t admit it to yourself, still you are seeking–seeking. Aren’t you? Aren’t you yourself seeking?”

“Oh, that’s another matter,” put in Argyle. “Lilly is happily married and on the shelf. With such a fine woman as Tanny I should think so– RATHER! But his is an exceptional nature, and an exceptional case. As for me, I made a hell of my marriage, and I swear it nearly sent me to hell. But I didn’t forswear love, when I forswore marriage and woman. Not by ANY means.”

“Are you not seeking any more, Lilly?” asked the Marchese. “Do you seek nothing?”

“We married men who haven’t left our wives, are we supposed to seek anything?” said Lilly. “Aren’t we perfectly satisfied and in bliss with the wonderful women who honour us as wives?”

“Ah, yes, yes!” said the Marchese. “But now we are not speaking to the world. Now we try to speak of that which we have in our centre of our hearts.”

“And what have we there?” said Lilly.

“Well–shall I say? We have unrest. We have another need. We have something that hurts and eats us, yes, eats us inside. Do I speak the truth?”

“Yes. But what is the something?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. But it is something in love, I think. It is love itself which gnaws us inside, like a cancer,” said the Italian.

“But why should it? Is that the nature of love?” said Lilly.

“I don’t know. Truly. I don’t know.–But perhaps it is in the nature of love–I don’t know.–But I tell you, I love my, wife–she is very dear to me. I admire her, I trust her, I believe her. She is to me much more than any woman, more even than my mother.–And so, I am very happy. I am very happy, she is very happy, in our love and our marriage.–But wait. Nothing has changed–the love has not changed: it is the same.–And yet we are NOT happy. No, we are not happy. I know she is not happy, I know I am not–“

“Why should you be?” said Lilly.

“Yes–and it is not even happiness,” said the Marchese, screwing up his face in a painful effort of confession. “It is not even happiness. No, I do not ask to be happy. Why should I? It is childish–but there is for both of us, I know it, something which bites us, which eats us within, and drives us, drives us, somewhere, we don’t know where. But it drives us, and eats away the life–and yet we love each other, and we must not separate–Do you know what I mean? Do you understand me at all in what I say? I speak what is true.”

“Yes, I understand. I’m in the same dilemma myself.–But what I want to hear, is WHY you think it is so. Why is it?”

“Shall I say what I think? Yes? And you can tell me if it is foolish to you.–Shall I tell you? Well. Because a woman, she now first wants the man, and he must go to her because he is wanted. Do you understand?–You know–supposing I go to a woman–supposing she is my wife–and I go to her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is I who want. Then she puts me off. Then she says, not now, not now, I am tired, I am not well. I do not feel like it. She puts me off– till I am angry or sorry or whatever I am–but till my blood has gone down again, you understand, and I don’t want her any more. And then she puts her arms round me, and caresses me, and makes love to me– till she rouses me once more. So, and so she rouses me–and so I come to her. And I love her, it is very good, very good. But it was she who began, it was her initiative, you know.–I do not think, in all my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative, you know. She will yield to me–because I insist, or because she wants to be a good submissive wife who loves me. So she will yield to me. But ah, what is it, you know? What is it a woman who allows me, and who has no answer? It is something worse than nothing–worse than nothing. And so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving.–If I say to her, she says it is not true–not at all true. Then she says, all she wants is that I should desire her, that I should love her and desire her. But even that is putting her will first. And if I come to her so, if I come to her of my own desire, then she puts me off. She puts me off, or she only allows me to come to her. Even now it is the same after ten years, as it was at first. But now I know, and for many years I did not know–“

The little man was intense. His face was strained, his blue eyes so stretched that they showed the whites all round. He gazed into Lilly’s face.

“But does it matter?” said Lilly slowly, “in which of you the desire initiates? Isn’t the result the same?”

“It matters. It matters–” cried the Marchese.

“Oh, my dear fellow, how MUCH it matters–” interrupted Argyle sagely.

“Ay!” said Aaron.

The Marchese looked from one to the other of them.

“It matters!” he cried. “It matters life or death. It used to be, that desire started in the man, and the woman answered. It used to be so for a long time in Italy. For this reason the women were kept away from the men. For this reason our Catholic religion tried to keep the young girls in convents, and innocent, before marriage. So that with their minds they should not know, and should not start this terrible thing, this woman’s desire over a man, beforehand. This desire which starts in a woman’s head, when she knows, and which takes a man for her use, for her service. This is Eve. Ah, I hate Eve. I hate her, when she knows, and when she WILLS. I hate her when she will make of me that which serves her desire.–She may love me, she may be soft and kind to me, she may give her life for me. But why? Only because I am HERS. I am that thing which does her most intimate service. She can see no other in me. And I may be no other to her–“

“Then why not let it be so, and be satisfied?” said Lilly.

“Because I cannot. I cannot. I would. But I cannot. The Borghesia– the citizens–the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who can. Oh, yes. The bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers, these serve their wives so, and their wives love them. They are the marital maquereaux–the husband- maquereau, you know. Their wives are so stout and happy, and they dote on their husbands and always betray them. So it is with the bourgeoise. She loves her husband so much, and is always seeking to betray him. Or she is a Madame Bovary, seeking for a scandal. But the bourgeois husband, he goes on being the same. He is the horse, and she the driver. And when she says gee-up, you know–then he comes ready, like a hired maquereau. Only he feels so good, like a good little boy at her breast. And then there are the nice little children. And so they keep the world going.–But for me–” he spat suddenly and with frenzy on the floor.

“You are quite right, my boy,” said Argyle. “You are quite right. They’ve got the start of us, the women: and we’ve got to canter when they say gee-up. I–oh, I went through it all. But I broke the shafts and smashed the matrimonial cart, I can tell you, and I didn’t care whether I smashed her up along with it or not. I didn’t care one single bit, I assure you.–And here I am. And she is dead and buried these dozen years. Well–well! Life, you know, life. And women oh, they are the very hottest hell once they get the start of you. There’s NOTHING they won’t do to you, once they’ve got you. Nothing they won’t do to you. Especially if they love you. Then you may as well give up the ghost: or smash the cart behind you, and her in it. Otherwise she will just harry you into submission, and make a dog of you, and cuckold you under your nose. And you’ll submit. Oh, you’ll submit, and go on calling her my darling. Or else, if you won’t submit, she’ll do for you. Your only chance is to smash the shafts, and the whole matrimonial cart. Or she’ll do for you. For a woman has an uncanny, hellish strength–she’s a she-bear and a wolf, is a woman when she’s got the start of you. Oh, it’s a terrible experience, if you’re not a bourgeois, and not one of the knuckling-under money-making sort.”

“Knuckling-under sort. Yes. That is it,” said the Marchese.

“But can’t there be a balancing of wills?” said Lilly.

“My dear boy, the balance lies in that, that when one goes up, the other goes down. One acts, the other takes. It is the only way in love–And the women are nowadays the active party. Oh, yes, not a shadow of doubt about it. They take the initiative, and the man plays up. That’s how it is. The man just plays up.–Nice manly proceeding, what!” cried Argyle.

“But why can’t man accept it as the natural order of things?” said Lilly. “Science makes it the natural order.”

“All my — to science,” said Argyle. “No man with one drop of real spunk in him can stand it long.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” cried the Italian. “Most men want it so. Most men want only, that a woman shall want them, and they shall then play up to her when she has roused them. Most men want only this: that a woman shall choose one man out, to be her man, and he shall worship her and come up when she shall provoke him. Otherwise he is to keep still. And the woman, she is quite sure of her part. She must be loved and adored, and above all, obeyed, particularly in her sex desire. There she must not be thwarted, or she becomes a devil. And if she is obeyed, she becomes a misunderstood woman with nerves, looking round for the next man whom she can bring under. So it is.”

“Well,” said Lilly. “And then what?”

“Nay,” interrupted Aaron. “But do you think it’s true what he says? Have you found it like that? You’re married. Has your experience been different, or the same?”

“What was yours?” asked Lilly.

“Mine was the same. Mine was the same, if ever it was,” said Aaron.

“And mine was EXTREMELY similar,” said Argyle with a grimace.

“And yours, Lilly?” asked the Marchese anxiously.

“Not very different,” said Lilly.

“Ah!” cried Del Torre, jerking up erect as if he had found something.

“And what’s your way out?” Aaron asked him.

“I’m not out–so I won’t holloa,” said Lilly. “But Del Torre puts it best.–What do you say is the way out, Del Torre?”

“The way out is that it should change: that the man should be the asker and the woman the answerer. It must change.”

“But it doesn’t. Prrr!” Argyle made his trumpeting noise.

“Does it?” asked Lilly of the Marchese.

“No. I think it does not.”

“And will it ever again?”

“Perhaps never.”

“And then what?”

“Then? Why then man seeks a _pis-aller_. Then he seeks something which will give him answer, and which will not only draw him, draw him, with a terrible sexual will.–So he seeks young girls, who know nothing, and so cannot force him. He thinks he will possess them while they are young, and they will be soft and responding to his wishes.–But in this, too, he is mistaken. Because now a baby of one year, if it be a female, is like a woman of forty, so is its will made up, so it will force a man.”

“And so young girls are no good, even as a _pis-aller_.”

“No good–because they are all modern women. Every one, a modern woman. Not one who isn’t.”

“Terrible thing, the modern woman,” put in Argyle.

“And then–?”

“Then man seeks other forms of loves, always seeking the loving response, you know, of one gentler and tenderer than himself, who will wait till the man desires, and then will answer with full love. –But it is all _pis-aller_, you know.”

“Not by any means, my boy,” cried Argyle.

“And then a man naturally loves his own wife, too, even if it is not bearable to love her.”

“Or one leaves her, like Aaron,” said Lilly.

“And seeks another woman, so,” said the Marchese.

“Does he seek another woman?” said Lilly. “Do you, Aaron?”

“I don’t WANT to,” said Aaron. “But–I can’t stand by myself in the middle of the world and in the middle of people, and know I am quite by myself, and nowhere to go, and nothing to hold on to. I can for a day or two–But then, it becomes unbearable as well. You get frightened. You feel you might go funny–as you would if you stood on this balcony wall with all the space beneath you.”

“Can’t one be alone–quite alone?” said Lilly.

“But no–it is absurd. Like Saint Simeon Stylites on a pillar. But it is absurd!” cried the Italian.

“I don’t mean like Simeon Stylites. I mean can’t one live with one’s wife, and be fond of her: and with one’s friends, and enjoy their company: and with the world and everything, pleasantly: and yet KNOW that one is alone? Essentially, at the very core of me, alone. Eternally alone. And choosing to be alone. Not sentimental or LONELY. Alone, choosing to be alone, because by one’s own nature one is alone. The being with another person is secondary,” said Lilly.

“One is alone,” said Argyle, “in all but love. In all but love, my dear fellow. And then I agree with you.”

“No,” said Lilly, “in love most intensely of all, alone.”

“Completely incomprehensible,” said Argyle. “Amounts to nothing.”

“One man is but a part. How can he be so alone?” said the Marchese.

“In so far as he is a single individual soul, he IS alone–ipso facto. In so far as I am I, and only I am I, and I am only I, in so far, I am inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self- knowledge.”

“My dear boy, you are becoming metaphysical, and that is as bad as softening of the brain,” said Argyle.

“All right,” said Lilly.

“And,” said the Marchese, “it may be so by REASON. But in the heart–? Can the heart ever beat quite alone? Plop! Plop!–Can the heart beat quite alone, alone in all the atmosphere, all the space of the universe? Plop! Plop! Plop!–Quite alone in all the space?” A slow smile came over the Italian’s face. “It is impossible. It may eat against the heart of other men, in anger, all in pressure against the others. It may beat hard, like iron, saying it is independent. But this is only beating against the heart of mankind, not alone.– But either with or against the heart of mankind, or the heart of someone, mother, wife, friend, children–so must the heart of every man beat. It is so.”

“It beats alone in its own silence,” said Lilly.

The Italian shook his head.

“We’d better be going inside, anyhow,” said Argyle. “Some of you will be taking cold.”

“Aaron,” said Lilly. “Is it true for you?”

“Nearly,” said Aaron, looking into the quiet, half-amused, yet frightening eyes of the other man. “Or it has been.”

“A miss is as good as a mile,” laughed Lilly, rising and picking up his chair to take it indoors. And the laughter of his voice was so like a simple, deliberate amiability, that Aaron’s heart really stood still for a second. He knew that Lilly was alone–as far as he, Aaron, was concerned. Lilly was alone–and out of his isolation came his words, indifferent as to whether they came or not. And he left his friends utterly to their own choice. Utterly to their own choice. Aaron felt that Lilly was _there_, existing in life, yet neither asking for connection nor preventing any connection. He was present, he was the real centre of the group. And yet he asked nothing of them, and he imposed nothing. He left each to himself, and he himself remained just himself: neither more nor less. And there was a finality about it, which was at once maddening and fascinating. Aaron felt angry, as if he were half insulted by the other man’s placing the gift of friendship or connection so quietly back in the giver’s hands. Lilly would receive no gift of friendship in equality. Neither would he violently refuse it. He let it lie unmarked. And yet at the same time Aaron knew that he could depend on the other man for help, nay, almost for life itself–so long as it entailed no breaking of the intrinsic isolation of Lilly’s soul. But this condition was also hateful. And there was also a great fascination in it.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MARCHESA

So Aaron dined with the Marchesa and Manfredi. He was quite startled when his hostess came in: she seemed like somebody else. She seemed like a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance. She wore a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour, with some kind of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides. It was terribly modern, short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and breast and all her beautiful white arms. Round her throat was a collar of dark-blue sapphires. Her hair was done low, almost to the brows, and heavy, like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing. She was most carefully made up–yet with that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red, which was quite intentional, and which frightened Aaron. He thought her wonderful, and sinister. She affected him with a touch of horror. She sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet. She had tapestry shoes, blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes: metallic naked. The gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side. Aaron could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot. It was as if she were dusted with dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity.

She must have seen his face, seen that he was _ebloui_.

“You brought the flute?” she said, in that toneless, melancholy, unstriving voice of hers. Her voice alone was the same: direct and bare and quiet.

“Yes.”

“Perhaps I shall sing later on, if you’ll accompany me. Will you?”

“I thought you hated accompaniments.”

“Oh, no–not just unison. I don’t mean accompaniment. I mean unison. I don’t know how it will be. But will you try?”

“Yes, I’ll try.”

“Manfredi is just bringing the cocktails. Do you think you’d prefer orange in yours?”

“Ill have mine as you have yours.”

“I don’t take orange in mine. Won’t you smoke?”

The strange, naked, remote-seeming voice! And then the beautiful firm limbs thrust out in that dress, and nakedly dusky as with gold-dust. Her beautiful woman’s legs, slightly glistening, duskily. His one abiding instinct was to touch them, to kiss them. He had never known a woman to exercise such power over him. It was a bare, occult force, something he could not cope with.

Manfredi came in with the little tray. He was still in uniform.

“Hello!” cried the little Italian. “Glad to see you–well, everything all right? Glad to hear it. How is the cocktail, Nan?”

“Yes,” she said. “All right.”

“One drop too much peach, eh?”

“No, all right.”

“Ah,” and the little officer seated himself, stretching his gaitered legs as if gaily. He had a curious smiling look on his face, that Aaron thought also diabolical–and almost handsome. Suddenly the odd, laughing, satanic beauty of the little man was visible.

“Well, and what have you been doing with yourself?” said he. “What did you do yesterday?”

“Yesterday?” said Aaron. “I went to the Uffizi.”

“To the Uffizi? Well! And what did you think of it?”

“Very fine.”

“I think it is. I think it is. What pictures did you look at?”

“I was with Dekker. We looked at most, I believe.”

“And what do you remember best?”

“I remember Botticelli’s Venus on the Shell.”

“Yes! Yes!–” said Manfredi. “I like her. But I like others better. You thought her a pretty woman, yes?”

“No–not particularly pretty. But I like her body. And I like the fresh air. I like the fresh air, the summer sea-air all through it– through her as well.”

“And her face?” asked the Marchesa, with a slow, ironic smile.

“Yes–she’s a bit baby-faced,” said Aaron.

“Trying to be more innocent than her own common-sense will let her,” said the Marchesa.

“I don’t agree with you, Nan,” said her husband. “I think it is just that wistfulness and innocence which makes her the true Venus: the true modern Venus. She chooses NOT to know too much. And that is her attraction. Don’t you agree, Aaron? Excuse me, but everybody speaks of you as Aaron. It seems to come naturally. Most people speak of me as Manfredi, too, because it is easier, perhaps, than Del Torre. So if you find it easier, use it. Do you mind that I call you Aaron?”

“Not at all. I hate Misters, always.”

“Yes, so do I. I like one name only.”

The little officer seemed very winning and delightful to Aaron this evening–and Aaron began to like him extremely. But the dominating consciousness in the room was the woman’s.

“DO you agree, Mr. Sisson?” said the Marchesa. “Do you agree that the mock-innocence and the sham-wistfulness of Botticelli’s Venus are her great charms?”

“I don’t think she is at all charming, as a person,” said Aaron. “As a particular woman, she makes no impression on me at all. But as a picture–and the fresh air, particularly the fresh air. She doesn’t seem so much a woman, you know, as the kind of out-of-doors morning- feelings at the seaside.”

“Quite! A sort of sea-scape of a woman. With a perfectly sham innocence. Are you as keen on innocence as Manfredi is?”

“Innocence?” said Aaron. “It’s the sort of thing I don’t have much feeling about.”

“Ah, I know you,” laughed the soldier wickedly. “You are the sort of man who wants to be Anthony to Cleopatra. Ha-ha!”

Aaron winced as if struck. Then he too smiled, flattered. Yet he felt he had been struck! Did he want to be Anthony to Cleopatra? Without knowing, he was watching the Marchesa. And she was looking away, but knew he was watching her. And at last she turned her eyes to his, with a slow, dark smile, full of pain and fuller still of knowledge. A strange, dark, silent look of knowledge she gave him: from so far away, it seemed. And he felt all the bonds that held him melting away. His eyes remained fixed and gloomy, but with his mouth he smiled back at her. And he was terrified. He knew he was sulking towards her– sulking towards her. And he was terrified. But at the back of his mind, also, he knew there was Lilly, whom he might depend on. And also he wanted to sink towards her. The flesh and blood of him simply melted out, in desire towards her. Cost what may, he must come to her. And yet he knew at the same time that, cost what may, he must keep the power to recover himself from her. He must have his cake and eat it.

And she became Cleopatra to him. “Age cannot wither, nor custom stale–” To his instinctive, unwilled fancy, she was Cleopatra.

They went in to dinner, and he sat on her right hand. It was a smallish table, with a very few daisy-flowers: everything rather frail, and sparse. The food the same–nothing very heavy, all rather exquisite. They drank hock. And he was aware of her beautiful arms, and her bosom; her low-crowded, thick hair, parted in the centre: the sapphires on her throat, the heavy rings on her fingers: and the paint on her lips, the fard. Something deep, deep at the bottom of him hovered upon her, cleaved to her. Yet he was as if sightless, in a stupor. Who was she, what was she? He had lost all his grasp. Only he sat there, with his face turned to hers, or to her, all the time. And she talked to him. But she never looked at him.

Indeed she said little. It was the husband who talked. His manner towards Aaron was almost caressive. And Aaron liked it. The woman was silent mostly, and seemed remote. And Aaron felt his life ebb towards her. He felt the marvellousness, the rich beauty of her arms and breast. And the thought of her gold-dusted smooth limbs beneath the table made him feel almost an idiot.

The second wine was a gold-coloured Moselle, very soft and rich and beautiful. She drank this with pleasure, as one who understands. And for dessert there was a dish of cacchi–that orange-coloured, pulpy Japanese fruit–persimmons. Aaron had never eaten these before. Soft, almost slimy, of a wonderful colour, and of a flavour that had sunk from harsh astringency down to that first decay-sweetness which is all autumn-rich. The Marchese loved them, and scooped them out with his spoon. But she ate none.

Aaron did not know what they talked about, what was said. If someone had taken his mind away altogether, and left him with nothing but a body and a spinal consciousness, it would have been the same.

But at coffee the talk turned to Manfredi’s duties. He would not be free from the army for some time yet. On the morrow, for example, he had to be out and away before it was day. He said he hated it, and wanted to be a free man once more. But it seemed to Aaron he would be a very bored man, once he was free. And then they drifted on to talk of the palazzo in which was their apartment.

“We’ve got such a fine terrace–you can see it from your house where you are,” said Manfredi. “Have you noticed it?”

“No,” said Aaron.

“Near that tuft of palm-trees. Don’t you know?”

“No,” said Aaron.

“Let us go out and show it him,” said the Marchesa.

Manfredi fetched her a cloak, and they went through various doors, then up some steps. The terrace was broad and open. It looked straight across the river at the opposite Lungarno: and there was the thin-necked tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the great dome of the cathedral in the distance, in shadow-bulk in the cold-aired night of stars. Little trams were running brilliant over the flat new bridge on the right. And from a garden just below rose a tuft of palm-trees.

“You see,” said the Marchesa, coming and standing close to Aaron, so that she just touched him, “you can know the terrace, just by these palm trees. And you are in the Nardini just across there, are you? On the top floor, you said?”

“Yes, the top floor–one of the middle windows, I think.”

“One that is always open now–and the others are shut. I have noticed it, not connecting it with you.”

“Yes, my window is always open.”

She was leaning very slightly against him, as he stood. And he knew, with the same kind of inevitability with which he knew he would one day die, that he would be the lover of this woman. Nay, that he was her lover already.

“Don’t take cold,” said Manfredi.

She turned at once indoors. Aaron caught a faint whiff of perfume from the little orange trees in tubs round the wall.

“Will you get the flute?” she said as they entered.

“And will you sing?” he answered.

“Play first,” she said.

He did as she wished. As the other night, he went into the big music- room to play. And the stream of sound came out with the quick wild imperiousness of the pipe. It had an immediate effect on her. She seemed to relax the peculiar, drug-like tension which was upon her at all ordinary times. She seemed to go still, and yielding. Her red mouth looked as if it might moan with relief. She sat with her chin dropped on her breast, listening. And she did not move. But she sat softly, breathing rather quick, like one who has been hurt, and is soothed. A certain womanly naturalness seemed to soften her.

And the music of the flute came quick, rather brilliant like a call- note, or like a long quick message, half command. To her it was like a pure male voice–as a blackbird’s when he calls: a pure male voice, not only calling, but telling her something, telling her something, and soothing her soul to sleep. It was like the fire-music putting Brunnhilde to sleep. But the pipe did not flicker and sink. It seemed to cause a natural relaxation in her soul, a peace. Perhaps it was more like waking to a sweet, morning awakening, after a night of tormented, painful tense sleep. Perhaps more like that.

When Aaron came in, she looked at him with a gentle, fresh smile that seemed to make the fard on her face look like a curious tiredness, which now she might recover from. And as the last time, it was difficult for her to identify this man with the voice of the flute. It was rather difficult. Except that, perhaps, between his brows was something of a doubt, and in his bearing an aloofness that made her dread he might go away and not come back. She could see it in him, that he might go away and not come back.

She said nothing to him, only just smiled. And the look of knowledge in her eyes seemed, for the moment, to be contained in another look: a look of faith, and at last happiness. Aaron’s heart stood still. No, in her moment’s mood of faith and at last peace, life-trust, he was perhaps more terrified of her than in her previous sinister elegance. His spirit started and shrank. What was she going to ask of him?

“I am so anxious that you should come to play one Saturday morning,” said Manfredi. “With an accompaniment, you know. I should like so much to hear you with piano accompaniment.”

“Very well,” said Aaron.

“Will you really come? And will you practise with me, so that I can accompany you?” said Manfredi eagerly.

“Yes. I will,” said Aaron.

“Oh, good! Oh, good! Look here, come in on Friday morning and let us both look through the music.”

“If Mr. Sisson plays for the public,” said the Marchesa, “he must not do it for charity. He must have the proper fee.”

“No, I don’t want it,” said Aaron.

“But you must earn money, mustn’t you?” said she.

“I must,” said Aaron. “But I can do it somewhere else.”

“No. If you play for the public, you must have your earnings. When you play for me, it is different.”

“Of course,” said Manfredi. “Every man must have his wage. I have mine from the Italian government—“

After a while, Aaron asked the Marchesa if she would sing.

“Shall I?” she said.

“Yes, do.”

“Then I will sing alone first, to let you see what you think of it– I shall be like Trilby–I won’t say like Yvette Guilbert, because I daren’t. So I will be like Trilby, and sing a little French song. Though not Malbrouck, and without a Svengali to keep me in tune.”

She went near the door, and stood with heir hands by her side. There was something wistful, almost pathetic now, in her elegance.

“Derriere chez mon pere
_Vole vole mon coeur, vole_! Derriere chez mon pere
Il y a un pommier doux.
_Tout doux, et iou
Et iou, tout doux.
Il y a unpommier doux_.

Trois belles princesses
_Vole vole mon coeur, vole_! Trois belles princesses
Sont assis dessous.
_Tout doux, et iou
Et iou, tout doux.
Sont asses dessous._”

She had a beautiful, strong, sweet voice. But it was faltering, stumbling and sometimes it seemed to drop almost to speech. After three verses she faltered to an end, bitterly chagrined.

“No,” she said. “It’s no good. I can’t sing.” And she dropped in her chair.

“A lovely little tune,” said Aaron. “Haven’t you got the music?”

She rose, not answering, and found him a little book.

“What do the words mean?” he asked her.

She told him. And then he took his flute.

“You don’t mind if I play it, do you?” he said.

So he played the tune. It was so simple. And he seemed to catch the lilt and the timbre of her voice.

“Come and sing it while I play–” he said.

“I can’t sing,” she said, shaking her head rather bitterly.

“But let us try,” said he, disappointed.

“I know I can’t,” she said. But she rose.

He remained sitting at the little table, the book propped up under the reading lamp. She stood at a little distance, unhappy.

“I’ve always been like that,” she said. “I could never sing music, unless I had a thing drilled into me, and then it wasn’t singing any more.”

But Aaron wasn’t heeding. His flute was at his mouth, he was watching her. He sounded the note, but she did not begin. She was twisting her handkerchief. So he played the melody alone. At the end of the verse, he looked up at her again, and a half mocking smile played in his eyes. Again he sounded the note, a challenge. And this time, as at his bidding, she began to sing. The flute instantly swung with a lovely soft firmness into the song, and she wavered only for a minute or two. Then her soul and her voice got free, and she sang–she sang as she wanted to sing, as she had always wanted to sing, without that awful scotch, that impediment inside her own soul, which prevented her.

She sang free, with the flute gliding along with her. And oh, how beautiful it was for her! How beautiful it was to sing the little song in the sweetness of her own spirit. How sweet it was to move pure and unhampered at last in the music! The lovely ease and lilt of her own soul in its motion through the music! She wasn’t aware of the flute. She didn’t know there was anything except her own pure lovely song- drift. Her soul seemed to breathe as a butterfly breathes, as it rests on a leaf and slowly breathes its wings. For the first time! For the first time her soul drew its own deep breath. All her life, the breath had caught half-way. And now she breathed full, deep, to the deepest extent of her being.

And oh, it was so wonderful, she was dazed. The song ended, she stood with a dazed, happy face, like one just coming awake. And the fard on her face seemed like the old night-crust, the bad sleep. New and luminous she looked out. And she looked at Aaron with a proud smile.

“Bravo, Nan! That was what you wanted,” said her husband.

“It was, wasn’t it?” she said, turning a wondering, glowing face to him.

His face looked strange and withered and gnome-like, at the moment.

She went and sat in her chair, quite silent, as if in a trance. The two men also sat quite still. And in the silence a little drama played itself between the three, of which they knew definitely nothing. But Manfredi knew that Aaron had done what he himself never could do, for this woman. And yet the woman was his own woman, not Aaron’s. And so, he was displaced. Aaron, sitting there, glowed with a sort of triumph. He had performed a little miracle, and felt himself a little wonder- worker, to whom reverence was due. And as in a dream the woman sat, feeling what a joy it was to float and move like a swan in the high air, flying upon the wings of her own spirit. She was as a swan which never before could get its wings quite open, and so which never could get up into the open, where alone it can sing. For swans, and storks make their music only when they are high, high up in the air. Then they can give sound to their strange spirits. And so, she.

Aaron and Manfredi kept their faces averted from one another and hardly spoke to one another. It was as if two invisible hands pushed their faces apart, away, averted. And Aaron’s face glimmered with a little triumph, and a little grimace of obstinacy. And the Italian’s face looked old, rather monkey-like, and of a deep, almost stone-bare bitterness. The woman looked wondering from one man to the other– wondering. The glimmer of the open flower, the wonder-look, still lasted. And Aaron said in his heart, what a goodly woman, what a woman to taste and enjoy. Ah, what a woman to enjoy! And was it not his privilege? Had he not gained it?

His manhood, or rather his maleness, rose powerfully in him, in a sort of mastery. He felt his own power, he felt suddenly his own virile title to strength and reward. Suddenly, and newly flushed with his own male super-power, he was going to have his reward. The woman was his reward. So it was, in him. And he cast it over in his mind. He wanted her–ha, didn’t he! But the husband sat there, like a soap- stone Chinese monkey, greyish-green. So, it would have to be another time.

He rose, therefore, and took his leave.

“But you’ll let us do that again, won’t you?” said she.

“When you tell me, I’ll come,” said he.

“Then I’ll tell you soon,” said she.

So he left, and went home to his own place, and there to his own remote room. As he laid his flute on the table he looked at it and smiled. He remembered that Lilly had called it Aaron’s Rod.

“So you blossom, do you?–and thorn as well,” said he.

For such a long time he had been gripped inside himself, and withheld. For such a long time it had been hard and unyielding, so hard and unyielding. He had wanted nothing, his desire had kept itself back, fast back. For such a long time his desire for woman had withheld itself, hard and resistant. All his deep, desirous blood had been locked, he had wanted nobody, and nothing. And it had been hard to live, so. Without desire, without any movement of passionate love, only gripped back in recoil! That was an experience to endure.

And now came his desire back. But strong, fierce as iron. Like the strength of an eagle with the lightning in its talons. Something to glory in, something overweening, the powerful male passion, arrogant, royal, Jove’s thunderbolt. Aaron’s black rod of power, blossoming again with red Florentine lilies and fierce thorns. He moved about in the splendour of his own male lightning, invested in the thunder of the male passion-power. He had got it back, the male godliness, the male godhead.

So he slept, and dreamed violent dreams of strange, black strife, something like the street-riot in Milan, but more terrible. In the morning, however, he cared nothing about his dreams. As soon as it was really light, he rose, and opened his window wide. It was a grey, slow morning. But he saw neither the morning nor the river nor the woman walking on the gravel river-bed with her goose nor the green hill up to San Miniato. He watched the tuft of palm-trees, and the terrace beside it. He could just distinguish the terrace clearly, among the green of foliage. So he stood at his window for a full hour, and did not move. Motionless, planted, he stood and watched that terrace across above the Arno. But like a statue.

After an hour or so, he looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock. So he rang for his coffee, and meanwhile still stood watching the terrace on the hill. He felt his turn had come. The phoenix had risen in fire again, out of the ashes.

Therefore at ten o’clock he went over the bridge. He wrote on the back of his card a request, would she please let him have the little book of songs, that he might practise them over. The manservant went, and came back with the request that Aaron should wait. So Aaron entered, while the man took his hat.

The manservant spoke only French and Spanish, no English. He was a Spaniard, with greyish hair and stooping shoulders, and dark, mute- seeming eyes. He spoke as little as possible. The Marchesa had inherited him from her father.

Aaron sat in the little sitting-room and waited. After a rather long time the Marchesa came in–wearing a white, thin blouse and a blue skirt. She was hardly made up at all. She had an odd pleased, yet brooding look on her face as she gave Aaron her hand. Something brooded between her brows. And her voice was strange, with a strange, secret undertone, that he could not understand. He looked up at her. And his face was bright, and his knees, as he sat, were like the knees of the gods.

“You wanted the book of _chansons_?” she said.

“I wanted to learn your tunes,” he replied.

“Yes. Look–here it is!” And she brought him the little yellow book. It was just a hand-book, with melody and words only, no accompaniment. So she stood offering him the book, but waiting as if for something else, and standing as if with another meaning.

He opened the leaves at random.

“But I ought to know which ones you sing,” said he, rising and standing by her side with the open book.

“Yes,” she said, looking over his arm. He turned the pages one by one. “_Trois jeunes tambours_,” said she. “Yes, that. . . . Yes, _En passant par la Lorraine_. . . . _Aupres de ma blonde_. . . . Oh, I like that one so much–” He stood and went over the tune in his mind.

“Would you like me to play it?” he said.

“Very much,” said she.

So he got his flute, propped up the book against a vase, and played the tune, whilst she hummed it fragmentarily. But as he played, he felt that he did not cast the spell over her. There was no connection. She was in some mysterious way withstanding him. She was withstanding him, and his male super-power, and his thunderbolt desire. She was, in some indescribable way, throwing cold water over his phoenix newly risen from the ashes of its nest in flames.

He realised that she did not want him to play. She did not want him to look at the songs. So he put the book away, and turned round, rather baffled, not quite sure what was happening, yet feeling she was withstanding him. He glanced at her face: it was inscrutable: it was her Cleopatra face once more, yet with something new and warm in it. He could not understand it. What was it in her face that puzzled him? Almost angered him? But she could not rob him of his male power, she could not divest him of his concentrated force.

“Won’t you take off your coat?” she said, looking at him with strange, large dark eyes. A strange woman, he could not understand her. Yet, as he sat down again, having removed his overcoat, he felt her looking at his limbs, his physical body. And this went against him, he did not want it. Yet quite fixed in him too was the desire for her, her beautiful white arms, her whole soft white body. And such desire he would not contradict nor allow to be contradicted. It was his will also. Her whole soft white body–to possess it in its entirety, its fulness.

“What have you to do this morning?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he said. “Have you?” He lifted his head and looked at her.

“Nothing at all,” said she.

And then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped. Then again he looked at her.

“Shall we be lovers?” he said.

She sat with her face averted, and did not answer. His heart struck heavily, but he did not relax.

“Shall we be lovers?” came his voice once more, with the faintest touch of irony.

Her face gradually grew dusky. And he wondered very much to see it.

“Yes,” said she, still not looking at him. “If you wish.”

“I do wish,” he said. And all the time he sat with his eyes fixed on her face, and she sat with her face averted.

“Now?” he said. “And where?”

Again she was silent for some moments, as if struggling with herself. Then she looked at him–a long, strange, dark look, incomprehensible, and which he did not like.

“You don’t want emotions? You don’t want me to say things, do you?” he said.

A faint ironic smile came on her face.

“I know what all that is worth,” she said, with curious calm equanimity. “No, I want none of that.”

“Then–?”

But now she sat gazing on him with wide, heavy, incomprehensible eyes. It annoyed him.

“What do you want to see in me?” he asked, with a smile, looking steadily back again.

And now she turned aside her face once more, and once more the dusky colour came in her cheek. He waited.

“Shall I go away?” he said at length.

“Would you rather?” she said, keeping her face averted.

“No,” he said.

Then again she was silent.

“Where shall I come to you?” he said.

She paused a moment still, then answered:

“I’ll go to my room.”

“I don’t know which it is,” he said.

“I’ll show it you,” she said.

“And then I shall come to you in ten minutes. In ten minutes,” he reiterated.

So she rose, and led the way out of the little salon. He walked with her to the door of her room, bowed his head as she looked at him, holding the door handle; and then he turned and went back to the drawing-room, glancing at his watch.

In the drawing-room he stood quite still, with his feet apart, and waited. He stood with his hands behind him, and his feet apart, quite motionless, planted and firm. So the minutes went by unheeded. He looked at his watch. The ten minutes were just up. He had heard footsteps and doors. So he decided to give her another five minutes. He wished to be quite sure that she had had her own time for her own movements.

Then at the end of the five minutes he went straight to her room, entered, and locked the door behind him. She was lying in bed, with her back to him.

He found her strange, not as he had imagined her. Not powerful, as he had imagined her. Strange, in his arms she seemed almost small and childish, whilst in daily life she looked a full, womanly woman. Strange, the naked way she clung to him! Almost like a sister, a younger sister! Or like a child! It filled him with a curious wonder, almost a bewilderment. In the dark sightlessness of passion, she seemed almost like a clinging child in his arms. And yet like a child who in some deep and essential way mocked him. In some strange and incomprehensible way, as a girl-child blindly obstinate in her deepest nature, she was against him. He felt she was not his woman. Through him went the feeling, “This is not my woman.”

When, after a long sleep, he awoke and came fully to himself, with that click of awakeness which is the end, the first shades were closing on the afternoon. He got up and reached for his watch.

“Quarter past four,” he said.

Her eyes stretched wide with surprise as she looked at him. But she said nothing. The same strange and wide, perhaps insatiable child- like curiosity was in her eyes as she watched him. He dressed very quickly. And her eyes were wide, and she said no single word.

But when he was dressed, and bent over her to say goodbye, she put her arms round him, that seemed such frail and childish arms now, yet withal so deadly in power. Her soft arms round his neck, her tangle of hair over his face. And yet, even as he kissed her, he felt her deadly. He wanted to be gone. He wanted to get out of her arms and her clinging and her tangle of hair and her curiosity and her strange and hateful power.

“You’ll come again. We’ll be like this again?” she whispered.

And it was hard for him to realise that this was that other woman, who had sat so silently on the sofa, so darkly and reservedly, at the tea at Algy’s.

“Yes! I will! Goodbye now!” And he kissed her, and walked straight out of the room. Quickly he took his coat and his hat, quickly, and left the house. In his nostrils was still the scent with which the bed linen was faintly scented–he did not know what it was. But now he wiped his face and his mouth, to wipe it away.

He had eaten nothing since coffee that morning, and was hungry, faint- feeling. And his face, and his mind, felt withered. Curiously he felt blasted as if blighted by some electricity. And he knew, he knew quite well he was only in possession of a tithe of his natural faculties. And in his male spirit he felt himself hating her: hating her deeply, damnably. But he said to himself: “No, I won’t hate her. I won’t hate her.”

So he went on, over the Ponte Vecchio, where the jeweller’s windows on the bridge were already blazing with light, on into the town. He wanted to eat something, so he decided to go to a shop he knew, where one could stand and eat good tiny rolls split into truffle or salami sandwiches, and drink Marsala. So one after the other he ate little truffle rolls, and drank a few glasses of Marsala. And then he did not know what to do. He did not want to eat any more, he had had what he wanted. His hunger had been more nervous than sensual.

So he went into the street. It was just growing dark and the town was lighting up. He felt curiously blazed, as if some flame or electric power had gone through him and withered his vital tissue. Blazed, as if some kind of electric flame had run over him and withered him. His brain felt withered, his mind had only one of its many-sighted eyes left open and unscorched. So many of the eyes of his mind were scorched now and sightless.

Yet a restlessness was in his nerves. What should he do? He remembered he had a letter in his pocket from Sir William Franks. Sir William had still teased him about his fate and his providence, in which he, Aaron, was supposed to trust. “I shall be very glad to hear from you, and to know how your benevolent Providence–or was yours a Fate–has treated you since we saw you—“

So, Aaron turned away, and walked to the post office. There he took paper, and sat down at one of the tables in the writing room, and wrote his answer. It was very strange, writing thus when most of his mind’s eyes were scorched, and it seemed he could hardly see to hold the pen, to drive it straight across the paper. Yet write he must. And most of his faculties being quenched or blasted for the moment, he wrote perhaps his greatest, or his innermost, truth.–“I don’t want my Fate or my Providence to treat me well. I don’t want kindness or love. I don’t believe in harmony and people loving one another. I believe in the fight and in nothing else. I believe in the fight which is in everything. And if it is a question of women, I believe in the fight of love, even if it blinds me. And if it is a question of the world, I believe in fighting it and in having it hate me, even if it breaks my legs. I want the world to hate me, because I can’t bear the thought that it might love me. For of all things love is the most deadly to me, and especially from such a repulsive world as I think this is. . . .”

Well, here was a letter for a poor old man to receive. But, in the dryness of his withered mind, Aaron got it out of himself. When a man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody else. Perhaps the same is true of a book.

His letter written, however, he stamped it and sealed it and put it in the box. That made it final. Then he turned towards home. One fact remained unbroken in the debris of his consciousness: that in the town was Lilly: and that when he needed, he could go to Lilly: also, that in the world was Lottie, his wife: and that against Lottie, his heart burned with a deep, deep, almost unreachable bitterness.–Like a deep burn on his deepest soul, Lottie. And like a fate which he resented, yet which steadied him, Lilly.

He went home and lay on his bed. He had enough self-command to hear the gong and go down to dinner. White and abstract-looking, he sat and ate his dinner. And then, thank God, he could go to bed, alone, in his own cold bed, alone, thank God. To be alone in the night! For this he was unspeakably thankful.

CHAPTER XIX

CLEOPATRA, BUT NOT ANTHONY

Aaron awoke in the morning feeling better, but still only a part himself. The night alone had restored him. And the need to be alone still was his greatest need. He felt an intense resentment against the Marchesa. He felt that somehow, she had given him a scorpion. And his instinct was to hate her. And yet he avoided hating her. He remembered Lilly–and the saying that one must possess oneself, and be alone in possession of oneself. And somehow, under the influence of Lilly, he refused to follow the reflex of his own passion. He refused to hate the Marchesa. He _did_ like her. He did _esteem_ her. And after all, she too was struggling with her fate. He had a genuine sympathy with her. Nay, he was not going to hate her.

But he could not see her. He could not bear the thought that she might call and see him. So he took the tram to Settignano, and walked away all day into the country, having bread and sausage in his pocket. He sat for long hours among the cypress trees of Tuscany. And never had any trees seemed so like ghosts, like soft, strange, pregnant presences. He lay and watched tall cypresses breathing and communicating, faintly moving and as it were walking in the small wind. And his soul seemed to leave him and to go far away, far back, perhaps, to where life was all different and time passed otherwise than time passes now. As in clairvoyance he perceived it: that our life is only a fragment of the shell of life. That there has been and will be life, human life such as we do not begin to conceive. Much that is life has passed away from men, leaving us all mere bits. In the dark, mindful silence and inflection of the cypress trees, lost races, lost language, lost human ways of feeling and of knowing. Men have known as we can no more know, have felt as we can no more feel. Great life-realities gone into the darkness. But the cypresses commemorate. In the afternoon, Aaron felt the cypresses rising dark about him, like so many high visitants from an old, lost, lost subtle world, where men had the wonder of demons about them, the aura of demons, such as still clings to the cypresses, in Tuscany.

All day, he did not make up his mind what he was going to do. His first impulse was never to see her again. And this was his intention all day. But as he went home in the tram he softened, and thought. Nay, that would not be fair. For how had she treated him, otherwise than generously.

She had been generous, and the other thing, that he felt blasted afterwards, which was his experience, that was fate, and not her fault. So he must see her again. He must not act like a churl. But he would tell her–he would tell her that he was a married man, and that though he had left his wife, and though he had no dogma of fidelity, still, the years of marriage had made a married man of him, and any other woman than his wife was a strange woman to him, a violation. “I will tell her,” he said to himself, “that at the bottom of my heart I love Lottie still, and that I can’t help it. I believe that is true. It isn’t love, perhaps. But it is marriage. I am married to Lottie. And that means I can’t be married to another woman. It isn’t my nature. And perhaps I can’t bear to live with Lottie now, because I am married and not in love. When a man is married, he is not in love. A husband is not a lover. Lilly told me that: and I know it’s true now. Lilly told me that a husband cannot be a lover, and a lover cannot be a husband. And that women will only have lovers now, and never a husband. Well, I am a husband, if I am anything. And I shall never be a lover again, not while I live. No, not to anybody. I haven’t it in me. I’m a husband, and so it is finished with me as a lover. I can’t be a lover any more, just as I can’t be aged twenty any more. I am a man now, not an adolescent. And to my sorrow I am a husband to a woman who wants a lover: always a lover. But all women want lovers. And I can’t be it any more. I don’t want to. I have finished that. Finished for ever: unless I become senile—“

Therefore next day he gathered up his courage. He would not have had courage unless he had known that he was not alone. The other man was in the town, and from this fact he derived his strength: the fact that Lilly was there. So at teatime he went over the river, and rang at her door. Yes, she was at home, and she had other visitors. She was wearing a beautiful soft afternoon dress, again of a blue like chicory- flowers, a pale, warm blue. And she had cornflowers in her belt: heaven knows where she had got them.

She greeted Aaron with some of the childish shyness. He could tell that she was glad he had come, and that she had wondered at his not coming sooner. She introduced him to her visitors: two young ladies and one old lady and one elderly Italian count. The conversation was mostly in French or Italian, so Aaron was rather out of it.

However, the visitors left fairly early, so Aaron stayed them out. When they had gone, he asked:

“Where is Manfredi?”

“He will come in soon. At about seven o’clock.”

Then there was a silence again.

“You are dressed fine today,” he said to her.

“Am I?” she smiled.

He was never able to make out quite what she felt, what she was feeling. But she had a quiet little air of proprietorship in him, which he did not like.

“You will stay to dinner tonight, won’t you?” she said.

“No–not tonight,” he said. And then, awkwardly, he added: “You know. I think it is better if we are friends–not lovers. You know–I don’t feel free. I feel my wife, I suppose, somewhere inside me. And I can’t help it—“

She bent her head and was silent for some moments. Then she lifted her face and looked at him oddly.

“Yes,” she said. “I am sure you love your wife.”

The reply rather staggered him–and to tell the truth, annoyed him.

“Well,” he said. “I don’t know about love. But when one has been married for ten years–and I did love her–then–some sort of bond or something grows. I think some sort of connection grows between us, you know. And it isn’t natural, quite, to break it.–Do you know what I mean?”

She paused a moment. Then, very softly, almost gently, she said:

“Yes, I do. I know so well what you mean.”

He was really surprised at her soft acquiescence. What _did_ she mean?

“But we can be friends, can’t we?” he said.

“Yes, I hope so. Why, yes! Goodness, yes! I should be sorry if we couldn’t be friends.”

After which speech he felt that everything was all right–everything was A-one. And when Manfredi came home, the first sound he heard was the flute and his wife’s singing.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” his wife said to him. “Shall we go into the sala and have real music? Will you play?”

“I should love to,” replied the husband.

Behold them then in the big drawing-room, and Aaron and the Marchese practising together, and the Marchesa singing an Italian folk-song while her husband accompanied her on the pianoforte. But her singing was rather strained and forced. Still, they were quite a little family, and it seemed quite nice. As soon as she could, the Marchesa left the two men together, whilst she sat apart. Aaron and Manfredi went through old Italian and old German music, tried one thing and then another, and seemed quite like brothers. They arranged a piece which they should play together on a Saturday morning, eight days hence.

The next day, Saturday, Aaron went to one of the Del Torre music mornings. There was a string quartette–and a violin soloist–and the Marchese at the piano. The audience, some dozen or fourteen friends, sat at the near end of the room, or in the smaller salotta, whilst the musicians performed at the further end of the room. The Lillys were there, both Tanny and her husband. But apart from these, Aaron knew nobody, and felt uncomfortable. The Marchesa gave her guests little sandwiches and glasses of wine or Marsala or vermouth, as they chose. And she was quite the hostess: the well-bred and very simple, but still the conventional hostess. Aaron did not like it. And he could see that Lilly too was unhappy. In fact, the little man bolted the moment he could, dragging after him the indignant Tanny, who was so looking forward to the excellent little sandwiches. But no–Lilly just rudely bolted. Aaron followed as soon as he could.

“Will you come to dinner tomorrow evening?” said his hostess to him as he was leaving. And he agreed. He had really resented seeing her as a conventional hostess, attending so charmingly to all the other people, and treating him so merely as one of the guests, among many others. So that when at the last moment she quietly invited him to dinner next day, he was flattered and accepted at once.

The next day was Sunday–the seventh day after his coming together with the Marchesa–which had taken place on the Monday. And already he was feeling much less dramatic in his decision to keep himself apart from her, to be merely friends. Already the memory of the last time was fanning up in him, not as a warning but as a terrible incitement. Again the naked desire was getting hold of him, with that peculiar brutal powerfulness which startled him and also pleased him.

So that by the time Sunday morning came, his recoil had exhausted itself, and he was ready again, eager again, but more wary this time. He sat in his room alone in the morning, playing his flute, playing over from memory the tunes she loved, and imagining how he and she would get into unison in the evening. His flute, his Aaron’s rod, would blossom once again with splendid scarlet flowers, the red Florentine lilies. It was curious, the passion he had for her: just unalloyed desire, and nothing else. Something he had not known in his life before. Previously there had been always _some_ personal quality, some sort of personal tenderness. But here, none. She did not seem to want it. She seemed to hate it, indeed. No, all he felt was stark, naked desire, without a single pretension. True enough, his last experience had been a warning to him. His desire and himself likewise had broken rather disastrously under the proving. But not finally broken. He was ready again. And with all the sheer powerful insolence of desire he looked forward to the evening. For he almost expected Manfredi would not be there. The officer had said something about having to go to Padua on the Saturday afternoon.

So Aaron went skipping off to his appointment, at seven o’clock. Judge of his chagrin, then, when he found already seated in the salotta an elderly, quite well-known, very cultured and very well-connected English authoress. She was charming, in her white hair and dress of soft white wool and white lace, with a long chain of filigree gold beads, like bubbles. She was charming in her old-fashioned manner too, as if the world were still safe and stable, like a garden in which delightful culture, and choice ideas bloomed safe from wind and weather. Alas, never was Aaron more conscious of the crude collapse in the world than when he listened to this animated, young-seeming lady from the safe days of the seventies. All the old culture and choice ideas seemed like blowing bubbles. And dear old Corinna Wade, she seemed to be blowing bubbles still, as she sat there so charming in her soft white dress, and talked with her bright animation about the influence of woman in Parliament and the influence of woman in the Periclean day. Aaron listened spell-bound, watching the bubbles float round his head, and almost hearing them go pop.

To complete the party arrived an elderly litterateur who was more proud of his not-very-important social standing than of his literature. In fact he was one of those English snobs of the old order, living abroad. Perfectly well dressed for the evening, his grey hair and his prim face was the most well-dressed thing to be met in North Italy.

“Oh, so glad to see you, Mr. French. I didn’t know you were in Florence again. You make that journey from Venice so often. I wonder you don’t get tired of it,” cried Corinna Wade.

“No,” he said. “So long as duty to England calls me to Florence, I shall come to Florence. But I can LIVE in no town but Venice.”

“No, I suppose you can’t. Well, there is something special about Venice: having no streets and no carriages, and moving about in a gondola. I suppose it is all much more soothing.”

“Much less nerve-racking, yes. And then there is a quality in the whole life. Of course I see few English people in Venice–only the old Venetian families, as a rule.”

“Ah, yes. That must be very interesting. They are very exclusive still, the Venetian _noblesse_?” said Miss Wade.

“Oh, very exclusive,” said Mr. French. “That is one of the charms. Venice is really altogether exclusive. It excludes the world, really, and defies time and modern movement. Yes, in spite of the steamers on the canal, and the tourists.”

“That is so. That is so. Venice is a strange back-water. And the old families are very proud still, in these democratic days. They have a great opinion of themselves, I am told.”

“Well,” said Mr. French. “Perhaps you know the rhyme:

“‘Veneziano gran’ Signore
Padovano buon’ dotore.
Vicenzese mangia il gatto Veronese tutto matto—‘”

“How very amusing!” said Miss Wade. “_Veneziana_ gran’ Signore. The Venetian is a great gentleman! Yes, I know they are all convinced of it. Really, how very amusing, in these advanced days. To be born a Venetian, is to be born a great gentleman! But this outdoes divine right of king.”

“To be born a Venetian GENTLEMAN, is to be born a great gentleman,” said Mr. French, rather fussily.

“You seriously think so?” said Miss Wade. “Well now, what do you base your opinion on?”

Mr. French gave various bases for his opinion.

“Yes–interesting. Very interesting. Rather like the Byzantines– lingering on into far other ages. Anna Comnena always charmed me very much. HOW she despised the flower of the north–even Tancred! And so the lingering Venetian families! And you, in your palazzo on the Grand Canal: you are a northern barbarian civilised into the old Venetian Signoria. But how very romantic a situation!”

It was really amusing to see the old maid, how she skirmished and hit out gaily, like an old jaunty free lance: and to see the old bachelor, how prim he was, and nervy and fussy and precious, like an old maid.

But need we say that Mr. Aaron felt very much out of it. He sat and listened, with a sardonic small smile on his face and a sardonic gleam in his blue eyes, that looked so very blue on such an occasion. He made the two elderly people uncomfortable with his silence: his democratic silence, Miss Wade might have said.

However, Miss Wade lived out towards Galuzzo, so she rose early, to catch her tram. And Mr. French gallantly and properly rose to accompany her, to see her safe on board. Which left Aaron and the Marchesa alone.

“What time is Manfredi coming back?” said he.

“Tomorrow,” replied she.

There was a pause.

“Why do you have those people?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Those two who were here this evening.”

“Miss Wade and Mr. French?–Oh, I like Miss Wade so very much. She is so refreshing.”

“Those old people,” said Aaron. “They licked the sugar off the pill, and go on as if everything was toffee. And we’ve got to swallow the pill. It’s easy to be refreshing—“

“No, don’t say anything against her. I like her so much.”

“And him?”

“Mr. French!–Well, he’s perhaps a little like the princess who felt the pea through three feather-beds. But he can be quite witty, and an excellent conversationalist, too. Oh yes, I like him quite well.”

“Matter of taste,” said Aaron.

They had not much to say to one another. The time passed, in the pauses. He looked at his watch.

“I shall have to go,” he said.

“Won’t you stay?” she said, in a small, muted voice.

“Stay all night?” he said.

“Won’t you?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. Did he not feel the strength of his desire on him.

After which she said no more. Only she offered him whiskey and soda, which he accepted.

“Go then,” he said to her. “And I’ll come to you.–Shall I come in fifteen minutes?”

She looked at him with strange, slow dark eyes. And he could not understand.

“Yes,” she said. And she went.

And again, this night as before, she seemed strangely small and clinging in his arms. And this night he felt his passion drawn from him as if a long, live nerve were drawn out from his body, a long live thread of electric fire, a long, living nerve finely extracted from him, from the very roots of his soul. A long fine discharge of pure, bluish fire, from the core of his soul. It was an excruciating, but also an intensely gratifying sensation.

This night he slept with a deeper obliviousness than before. But ah, as it grew towards morning how he wished he could be alone.

They must stay together till the day was light. And she seemed to love clinging to him and curling strangely on his breast. He could never reconcile it with her who was a hostess entertaining her guests. How could she now in a sort of little ecstasy curl herself and nestle herself on his, Aaron’s breast, tangling his face all over with her hair. He verily believed that this was what she really wanted of him: to curl herself on his naked breast, to make herself small, small, to feel his arms around her, while he himself was remote, silent, in some way inaccessible. This seemed almost to make her beside herself with gratification. But why, why? Was it because he was one of her own race, and she, as it were, crept right home to him?

He did not know. He only knew it had nothing to do with him: and that, save out of _complaisance_, he did not want it. It simply blasted his own central life. It simply blighted him.

And she clung to him closer. Strange, she was afraid of him! Afraid of him as of a fetish! Fetish afraid, and fetish-fascinated! Or was her fear only a delightful game of cat and mouse? Or was the fear genuine, and the delight the greater: a sort of sacrilege? The fear, and the dangerous, sacrilegious power over that which she feared.

In some way, she was not afraid of him at all. In some other way she used him as a mere magic implement, used him with the most amazing priestess-craft. Himself, the individual man which he was, this she treated with an indifference that was startling to him.

He forgot, perhaps, that this was how he had treated her. His famous desire for her, what had it been but this same attempt to strike a magic fire out of her, for his own ecstasy. They were playing the same game of fire. In him, however, there was all the time something hard and reckless and defiant, which stood apart. She was absolutely gone in her own incantations. She was absolutely gone, like a priestess utterly involved in her terrible rites. And he was part of the ritual only, God and victim in one. God and victim! All the time, God and victim. When his aloof soul realised, amid the welter of incantation, how he was being used,–not as himself but as something quite different –God and victim–then he dilated with intense surprise, and his remote soul stood up tall and knew itself alone. He didn’t want it, not at all. He knew he was apart. And he looked back over the whole mystery of their love-contact. Only his soul was apart.

He was aware of the strength and beauty and godlikeness that his breast was then to her–the magic. But himself, he stood far off, like Moses’ sister Miriam. She would drink the one drop of his innermost heart’s blood, and he would be carrion. As Cleopatra killed her lovers in the morning. Surely they knew that death was their just climax. They had approached the climax. Accept then.

But his soul stood apart, and could have nothing to do with it. If he had really been tempted, he would have gone on, and she might have had his central heart’s blood. Yes, and thrown away the carrion. He would have been willing.

But fatally, he was not tempted. His soul stood apart and decided. At the bottom of his soul he disliked her. Or if not her, then her whole motive. Her whole life-mode. He was neither God nor victim: neither greater nor less than himself. His soul, in its isolation as she lay on his breast, chose it so, with the soul’s inevitability. So, there was no temptation.

When it was sufficiently light, he kissed her and left her. Quietly he left the silent flat. He had some difficulty in unfastening the various locks and bars and catches of the massive door downstairs, and began, in irritation and anger, to feel he was a prisoner, that he was locked in. But suddenly the ponderous door came loose, and he was out in the street. The door shut heavily behind him, with a shudder. He was out in the morning streets of Florence.

CHAPTER XX

THE BROKEN ROD

The day was rainy. Aaron stayed indoors alone, and copied music and slept. He felt the same stunned, withered feeling as before, but less intensely, less disastrously, this time. He knew now, without argument or thought that he would never go again to the Marchesa: not as a lover. He would go away from it all. He did not dislike her. But he would never see her again. A great gulf had opened, leaving him alone on the far side.

He did not go out till after dinner. When he got downstairs he found the heavy night-door closed. He wondered: then remembered the Signorina’s fear of riots and disturbances. As again he fumbled with the catches, he felt that the doors of Florence were trying to prevent his egress. However, he got out.

It was a very dark night, about nine o’clock, and deserted seeming. He was struck by the strange, deserted feeling of the city’s atmosphere. Yet he noticed before him, at the foot of the statue, three men, one with a torch: a long torch with naked flames. The men were stooping over something dark, the man with the torch bending forward too. It was a dark, weird little group, like Mediaeval Florence. Aaron lingered on his doorstep, watching. He could not see what they were doing. But now, the two were crouching down; over a long dark object on the ground, and the one with the torch bending also to look. What was it? They were just at the foot of the statue, a dark little group under the big pediment, the torch-flames weirdly flickering as the torch-bearer moved and stooped lower to the two crouching men, who seemed to be kneeling.

Aaron felt his blood stir. There was something dark and mysterious, stealthy, in the little scene. It was obvious the men did not want to draw attention, they were so quiet and furtive-seeming. And an eerie instinct prevented Aaron’s going nearer to look. Instead, he swerved on to the Lungarno, and went along the top of the square, avoiding the little group in the centre. He walked the deserted dark-seeming street by the river, then turned inwards, into the city. He was going to the Piazza Vittoria Emmanuele, to sit in the cafe which is the centre of Florence at night. There he could sit for an hour, and drink his vermouth and watch the Florentines.

As he went along one of the dark, rather narrow streets, he heard a hurrying of feet behind him. Glancing round, he saw the torch-bearer coming along at a trot, holding his flaming torch up in front of him as he trotted down the middle of the narrow dark street. Aaron shrank under the wall. The trotting torch-bearer drew near, and now Aaron perceived the other two men slowly trotting behind, stealthily, bearing a stretcher on which a body was wrapped up, completely and darkly covered. The torch-bearer passed, the men with the stretcher passed too, hastily and stealthily, the flickering flames revealing them. They took no notice of Aaron, no notice of anything, but trotted softly on towards the centre of the city. Their queer, quick footsteps echoed down the distance. Then Aaron too resumed his way.

He came to the large, brilliantly-lighted cafe. It was Sunday evening, and the place was full. Men, Florentines, many, many men sat in groups and in twos and threes at the little marble tables. They were mostly in dark clothes or black overcoats. They had mostly been drinking just a cup of coffee–others however had glasses of wine or liquor. But mostly it was just a little coffee-tray with a tiny coffee pot and a cup and saucer. There was a faint film of tobacco smoke. And the men were all talking: talking, talking with that peculiar intensity of the Florentines. Aaron felt the intense, compressed sound of many half- secret voices. For the little groups and couples abated their voices, none wished that others should hear what they said.

Aaron was looking for a seat–there was no table to him-—when suddenly someone took him by the arm. It was Argyle.

“Come along, now! Come and join us. Here, this way! Come along!”

Aaron let himself be led away towards a corner. There sat Lilly and a strange man: called Levison. The room was warm. Aaron could never bear to be too hot. After sitting a minute, he rose and took off his coat, and hung it on a stand near the window. As he did so he felt the weight of his flute–it was still in his pocket. And he wondered if it was safe to leave it.

“I suppose no one will steal from the overcoat pockets,” he said, as he sat down.

“My dear chap, they’d steal the gold filling out of your teeth, if you happened to yawn,” said Argyle. “Why, have you left valuables in your overcoat?”

“My flute,” said Aaron.

“Oh, they won’t steal that,” said Argyle.

“Besides,” said Lilly, “we should see anyone who touched it.”

And so they settled down to the vermouth.

“Well,” said Argyle, “what have you been doing with yourself, eh? I haven’t seen a glimpse of you for a week. Been going to the dogs, eh?”

“Or the bitches,” said Aaron.

“Oh, but look here, that’s bad! That’s bad! I can see I shall have to take you in hand, and commence my work of reform. Oh, I’m a great reformer, a Zwingli and Savonarola in one. I couldn’t count the number of people I’ve led into the right way. It takes some finding, you know. Strait is the gate–damned strait sometimes. A damned tight squeeze. . . .” Argyle was somewhat intoxicated. He spoke with a slight slur, and laughed, really tickled at his own jokes. The man Levison smiled acquiescent. But Lilly was not listening. His brow was heavy and he seemed abstracted. He hardly noticed Aaron’s arrival.

“Did you see the row yesterday?” asked Levison.

“No,” said Aaron. “What was it?”

It was the socialists. They were making a demonstration against the imprisonment of one of the railway-strikers. I was there. They went on all right, with a good bit of howling and gibing: a lot of young louts, you know. And the shop-keepers shut up shop, and nobody showed the Italian flag, of course. Well, when they came to the Via Benedetto Croce, there were a few mounted carabinieri. So they stopped the procession, and the sergeant said that the crowd could continue, could go on where they liked, but would they not go down the Via Verrocchio, because it was being repaired, the roadway was all up, and there were piles of cobble stones. These might prove a temptation and lead to trouble. So would the demonstrators not take that road–they might take any other they liked.–Well, the very moment he had finished, there was a revolver shot, he made a noise, and fell forward over his horse’s nose. One of the anarchists had shot him. Then there was hell let loose, the carabinieri fired back, and people were bolting and fighting like devils. I cleared out, myself. But my God–what do you think of it?”

“Seems pretty mean,” said Aaron.

“Mean!–He had just spoken them fair–they could go where they liked, only would they not go down the one road, because of the heap of stones. And they let him finish. And then shot him dead.”

“Was he dead?” said Aaron.

“Yes–killed outright, the Nazione says.”

There was a silence. The drinkers in the cafe all continued to talk vehemently, casting uneasy glances.

“Well,” said Argyle, “if you let loose the dogs of war, you mustn’t expect them to come to heel again in five minutes.”

“But there’s no fair play about it, not a bit,” said Levison.

“Ah, my dear fellow, are you still so young and callow that you cherish the illusion of fair play?” said Argyle.

“Yes, I am,” said Levison.

“Live longer and grow wiser,” said Argyle, rather contemptuously.

“Are you a socialist?” asked Levison.

“Am I my aunt Tabitha’s dachshund bitch called Bella,” said Argyle, in his musical, indifferent voice. “Yes, Bella’s her name. And if you can tell me a damneder name for a dog, I shall listen, I assure you, attentively.”

“But you haven’t got an aunt called Tabitha,” said Aaron.

“Haven’t I? Oh, haven’t I? I’ve got TWO aunts called Tabitha: if not more.”

“They aren’t of any vital importance to you, are they?” said Levison.

“Not the very least in the world–if it hadn’t been that my elder Aunt Tabitha had christened her dachshund bitch Bella. I cut myself off from the family after that. Oh, I turned over a new leaf, with not a family name on it. Couldn’t stand Bella amongst the rest.”

“You must have strained most of the gnats out of your drink, Argyle,” said Lilly, laughing.

“Assiduously! Assiduously! I can’t stand these little vermin. Oh, I am quite indifferent about swallowing a camel or two–or even a whole string of dromedaries. How charmingly Eastern that sounds! But gnats! Not for anything in the world would I swallow one.”

“You’re a bit of a SOCIALIST though, aren’t you?” persisted Levison, now turning to Lilly.

“No,” said Lilly. “I was.”

“And am no more,” said Argyle sarcastically. “My dear fellow, the only hope of salvation for the world lies in the re-institution of slavery.”

“What kind of slavery?” asked Levison.

“Slavery! SLAVERY! When I say SLAVERY I don’t mean any of your damned modern reform cant. I mean solid sound slavery on which the Greek and the Roman world rested. FAR finer worlds than ours, my dear chap! Oh FAR finer! And can’t be done without slavery. Simply can’t be done.– Oh, they’ll all come to realise it, when they’ve had a bit more of this democratic washer-women business.”

Levison was laughing, with a slight sneer down his nose. “Anyhow, there’s no immediate danger–or hope, if you prefer it–of the re- instituting of classic slavery,” he said.

“Unfortunately no. We are all such fools,” said Argyle.

“Besides,” said Levison, “who would you make slaves of?”

“Everybody, my dear chap: beginning with the idealists and the theorising Jews, and after them your nicely-bred gentlemen, and then perhaps, your profiteers and Rothschilds, and ALL politicians, and ending up with the proletariat,” said Argyle.

“Then who would be the masters?–the professional classes, doctors and lawyers and so on?”

“What? Masters. They would be the sewerage slaves, as being those who had made most smells.” There was a moment’s silence.

“The only fault I have to find with your system,” said Levison, rather acidly, “is that there would be only one master, and everybody else slaves.”

“Do you call that a fault? What do you want with more than one master? Are you asking for several?–Well, perhaps there’s cunning in THAT.– Cunning devils, cunning devils, these theorising slaves–” And Argyle pushed his face with a devilish leer into Aaron’s face. “Cunning devils!” he reiterated, with a slight tipsy slur. “That be-fouled Epictetus wasn’t the last of ’em–nor the first. Oh, not by any means, not by any means.”

Here Lilly could not avoid a slight spasm of amusement. “But returning to serious conversation,” said Levison, turning his rather sallow face to Lilly. “I think you’ll agree with me that socialism is the inevitable next step–“

Lilly waited for some time without answering. Then he said, with unwilling attention to the question: “I suppose it’s the logically inevitable next step.”

“Use logic as lavatory paper,” cried Argyle harshly. “Yes–logically inevitable–and humanly inevitable at the same time. Some form of socialism is bound to come, no matter how you postpone it or try variations,” said Levison.

“All right, let it come,” said Lilly. “It’s not my affair, neither to help it nor to keep it back, or even to try varying it.”

“There I don’t follow you,” said Levison. “Suppose you were in Russia now–“

“I watch it I’m not.”

“But you’re in Italy, which isn’t far off. Supposing a socialist revolution takes place all around you. Won’t that force the problem on you?–It is every man’s problem,” persisted Levison.

“Not mine,” said Lilly.

“How shall you escape it?” said Levison.

“Because to me it is no problem. To Bolsh or not to Bolsh, as far as my mind goes, presents no problem. Not any more than to be or not to be. To be or not to be is simply no problem–“

“No, I quite agree, that since you are already existing, and since death is ultimately inevitable, to be or not to be is no sound problem,” said Levison. “But the parallel isn’t true of socialism. That is not a problem of existence, but of a certain mode of existence which centuries of thought and action on the part of Europe have now made logically inevitable for Europe. And therefore there is a problem. There is more than a problem, there is a dilemma. Either we must go to the logical conclusion–or–“

“Somewhere else,” said Lilly.

“Yes–yes. Precisely! But where ELSE? That’s the one half of the problem: supposing you do not agree to a logical progression in human social activity. Because after all, human society through the course of ages only enacts, spasmodically but still inevitably, the logical development of a given idea.”

“Well, then, I tell you.–The idea and the ideal has for me gone dead– dead as carrion–“

“Which idea, which ideal precisely?”

“The ideal of love, the ideal that it is better to give than to receive, the ideal of liberty, the ideal of the brotherhood of man, the ideal of the sanctity of human life, the ideal of what we call goodness, charity, benevolence, public spirited-ness, the ideal of sacrifice for a cause, the ideal of unity and unanimity–all the lot–all the whole beehive of ideals–has all got the modern bee- disease, and gone putrid, stinking.–And when the ideal is dead and putrid, the logical sequence is only stink.–Which, for me, is the truth concerning the ideal of good, peaceful, loving humanity and its logical sequence in socialism and equality, equal opportunity or whatever you like.–But this time he stinketh–and I’m sorry for any Christus who brings him to life again, to stink livingly for another thirty years: the beastly Lazarus of our idealism.”

“That may be true for you–“

“But it’s true for nobody else,” said Lilly. “All the worse for them. Let them die of the bee-disease.”

“Not only that,” persisted Levison, “but what is your alternative? Is it merely nihilism?”

“My alternative,” said Lilly, “is an alternative for no one but myself, so I’ll keep my mouth shut about it.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“I tell you, the ideal of fairness stinks with the rest.–I have no obligation to say what I think.”

“Yes, if you enter into conversation, you have–“

“Bah, then I didn’t enter into conversation.–The only thing is, I agree in the rough with Argyle. You’ve got to have a sort of slavery again. People are not MEN: they are insects and instruments, and their destiny is slavery. They are too many for me, and so what I think is ineffectual. But ultimately they will be brought to agree– after sufficient extermination–and then they will elect for themselves a proper and healthy and energetic slavery.”

“I should like to know what you mean by slavery. Because to me it is impossible that slavery should be healthy and energetic. You seem to have some other idea in your mind, and you merely use the word slavery out of exasperation–“

“I mean it none the less. I mean a real committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to the responsibility of a superior being.”

“It’ll take a bit of knowing, who are the inferior and which is the superior,” said Levison sarcastically.

“Not a bit. It is written between a man’s brows, which he is.”

“I’m afraid we shall all read differently.”

“So long as we’re liars.”

“And putting that question aside: I presume that you mean that this committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to someone higher shall be made voluntarily–a sort of voluntary self-gift of the inferiors–“

“Yes–more or less–and a voluntary acceptance. For it’s no pretty gift, after all.–But once made it must be held fast by genuine power. Oh yes–no playing and fooling about with it. Permanent and very efficacious power.”

“You mean military power?”

“I do, of course.”

Here Levison smiled a long, slow, subtle smile of ridicule. It all seemed to him the preposterous pretentiousness of a megalomaniac–one whom, after a while, humanity would probably have the satisfaction of putting into prison, or into a lunatic asylum. And Levison felt strong, overwhelmingly strong, in the huge social power with which he, insignificant as he was, was armed against such criminal-imbecile pretensions as those above set forth. Prison or the lunatic asylum. The face of the fellow gloated in these two inevitable engines of his disapproval.

“It will take you some time before you’ll get your doctrines accepted,” he said.

“Accepted! I’d be sorry. I don’t want a lot of swine snouting and sniffing at me with their acceptance.–Bah, Levison–one can easily make a fool of you. Do you take this as my gospel?”

“I take it you are speaking seriously.”

Here Lilly broke into that peculiar, gay, whimsical smile.

“But I should say the blank opposite with just as much fervour,” he declared.

“Do you mean to say you don’t MEAN what you’ve been saying?” said Levison, now really looking angry.

“Why, I’ll tell you the real truth,” said Lilly. “I think every man is a sacred and holy individual, NEVER to be violated; I think there is only one thing I hate to the verge of madness, and that is BULLYING. To see any living creature BULLIED, in any way, almost makes a murderer of me. That is true. Do you believe it–?”

“Yes,” said Levison unwillingly. That may be true as well. You have no doubt, like most of us, got a complex nature which–“

C R A S H!

There intervened one awful minute of pure shock, when the soul was in darkness.

Out of this shock Aaron felt himself issuing amid a mass of terrible sensations: the fearful blow of the explosion, the noise of glass, the hoarse howl of people, the rushing of men, the sudden gulf, the awful gulfing whirlpool of horror in the social life.

He stood in agony and semi-blindness amid a chaos. Then as he began to recover his consciousness, he found himself standing by a pillar some distance from where he had been sitting: he saw a place where tables and chairs were all upside down, legs in the air, amid debris of glass and breakage: he saw the cafe almost empty, nearly everybody gone: he saw the owner, or the manager, advancing aghast to the place of debris: he saw Lilly standing not far off, white as a sheet, and as if unconscious. And still he had no idea of what had happened. He thought perhaps something had broken down. He could not understand.

Lilly began to look round. He caught Aaron’s eye. And then Aaron began to approach his friend.