Sant approved of her procedure. Neither he nor she could see their way to another direct approach to Hadrian. They must bide a wee. Meanwhile, no harm was done and much good might be done by cultivating the English quarter. And, perhaps it would be as well to keep socialism in the background for the present. Jerry would stay where he was; and she had better set up for herself elsewhere: they occasionally could meet to compare notes; and, if anything particular happed, why they could write. So Mrs. Crowe took a little flat on Baboon Street, and displayed herself at the Spain Square teashop and the English sisterhood.
At the back of her brain there was a well-defined desire. She kept it there to gloat over in private and at intervals: for she was far too clever a woman to let her passion master her at this stage. It was the mainspring of her acts, the goal of her thoughts, the ultimate of her existence: but she kept it well concealed and controlled. Now and then, in the lonely depth of night, it surged to her oppression: but dawn and the respectability of her temper, brought it within bounds. She played a careful game, adding to her counters as opportunity occurred. She had the Liblabs and their four pounds a week to support her: she had (what she called) the secret history of the Pope in her possession: she was capturing the pious English. And then, one evening she acquired quite a priceless item of scandal which, sooner or later, she would use for the procuration of her Georgie.
She had been wandering about alone in some of those new streets on the Viminal Hill, which Modern Rome built in imitation of the suburban residences of British merchants: streets where comfortable redbrick detached mansions stand each in a railed garden. As she was passing one of these fine but homely residences, the electric light sprang up in the drawing-room; and she was aware of three figures seated in the bay-window. An afternoon-tea-table was between them. They were two gorgeous white women with fair hair, evidently mother and daughter. Those she did not know: but the third was George Arthur Rose. She peered between the gilded bronze bars of the gate. It was dusk. No one but herself was in the street. And there, not twenty yards away, behind a pane of glass, was the man she worshipped. She gave up herself to her emotions during one minute. Then he and the women retired to the back of the room; and a decorous black-coated lackey closed the curtains. For a moment, she felt like battering at the gate. Her heart violently palpitated. The connotation of the experience suddenly struck her. What was the Pope doing here? She knew that He went about everywhere: but they said that He never ate or drank in company; and she had seen Him finish a cup of tea. How dainty the elevation of that left little finger was! Ah! Why was He not dressed in white as usual? Disguised—taking tea in a private house—with two nameless women! Ah, why indeed! She focused her fury. The number on the gate—yes. She ran to the end of the street and read “Via Morino.” She crossed the road and returned; and found a niche where she could hide in the shadow of a pillared wall. Here, she watched and waited as a terrier waits on and watches a kitten demure in a tree—yapping and yelping almost inaudibly, well-nigh bursting with suppressed impulse to pounce. Perhaps she waited half-an-hour. Then a couple of lackeys came-down to the gate: opened it; and obsequiously bowed to an ecclesiastic who passed out into the street flinging the right fold of his cloak over his left shoulder. He swiftly walked towards Via Nationale; and she followed him. As he came into the more brilliant light, he drew the fold of his cloak closer across his mouth. That act decided her. She knew that her Georgie abhorred from every kind of muffling. That he should muffle now was natural enough. He did not wish to be recognized. He was incognito, for an evil purpose. That he should have chosen openly to walk through the biggest street in Rome, when he might have sneaked down byways, or might have taken a cab, only added to the evidence. Her Georgie was the most frantically daring of men, she knew. Precaution on the one hand, nullified by extreme audacity on the other, she had noted in him before. She nearly lost him as he made his way by the Austrian Embassy and the Gesù into Corso Vittorio Emanuele. At the Oratory he crossed and went by the little Piazza into Banchi, where he left a card with the porter of the Palazzo Attendolo. Again, he muffled his face and went on, crossing the temporary bridge, and going by Borgo Vecchio straight to the gate of the Vatican. Here, he was admitted; and Mrs. Crowe was left alone in agony and in hilarity. She turned-out of the Colonnade into the square cursing herself for not speaking to him, writhing because she had
