“We shall have another hot day tomorrow,” said Mrs. Bowen at length. “I hope you will find your room comfortable.”
“Yes: it’s at the back of the hotel, mighty high, and wide, and no sun ever comes into it except when they show it to foreigners in winter. Then they get a few rays to enter as a matter of business, on condition that they won’t detain them. I dare say I shall stay there some time. I suppose you will be getting away from Florence very soon.”
“Yes. But I haven’t decided where to go yet.”
“Should you like some general expression of my gratitude for all you’ve done for me, Mrs. Bowen?”
“No; I would rather not. It has been a great pleasure—to Effie.”
“Oh, a luxury beyond the dreams of avarice.” They spoke in low tones, and there was something in the hush that suggested to Colville the feasibility of taking into his unoccupied hand one of the pretty hands which the pale night-light showed him lying in Mrs. Bowen’s lap. But he forbore, and only sighed. “Well, then, I will say nothing. But I shall keep on thinking all my life.”
She made no answer.
“When you are gone, I shall have to make the most of Mr. Waters,” he said.
“He is going to stop all summer, I believe.”
“Oh yes. When I suggested to him the other day that he might find it too hot, he said that he had seventy New England winters to thaw out of his blood, and that all the summers he had left would not be more than he needed. One of his friends told him that he could cook eggs in his piazza in August, and he said that he should like nothing better than to cook eggs there. He’s the most delightfully expatriated compatriot I’ve ever seen.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s well enough for him. Life has no claims on him any more. I think it’s very pleasant over here, now that everybody’s gone,” added Colville, from a confused resentfulness of collectively remembered Days and Afternoons and Evenings. “How still the night is!”
A few feet clapping by on the pavement below alone broke the hush.
“Sometimes I feel very tired of it all, and want to get home,” sighed Mrs. Bowen.
“Well, so do I.”
“I can’t believe it’s right staying away from the country so long.” People often say such things in Europe.
“No, I don’t either, if you’ve got anything to do there.”
“You can always make something to do there.”
“Oh yes.” Some young young men, breaking from a street near by, began to sing. “We shouldn’t have that sort of thing at home.”
“No,” said Mrs. Bowen pensively.
“I heard just such singing before I fell asleep the night after that party at Madame Uccelli’s, and it filled me with fury.”
“Why should it do that?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like voices from our youth—Lina.”
She had no resentment of his use of her name in the tone with which she asked: “Did you hate that so much?”
“No; the loss of it.”
They both fetched a deep breath.
“The Uccellis have a villa near the baths of Lucca,” said Mrs. Bowen. “They have asked me to go.”
“Do you think of going?” inquired Colville. “I’ve always fancied it must be pleasant there.”
“No; I declined. Sometimes I think I will just stay on in Florence.”
“I dare say you’d find it perfectly comfortable. There’s nothing like having the range of one’s own house in summer.” He looked out of the window on the blue-black sky.
“ ‘And deepening through their silent spheres,
Heaven over heaven rose the night,’ ”
he quoted. “It’s wonderful! Do you remember how I used to read ‘Mariana in the South’ to you and poor Jenny? How it must have bored her! What an ass I was!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bowen breathlessly, in sympathy with his reminiscence rather than in agreement with his self-denunciation.
Colville broke into a laugh, and then she began to laugh too; but not quite willingly as it seemed.
Effie started from her sleep. “What—what is it?” she asked, stretching and shivering as half-wakened children do.
“Bedtime,” said her mother promptly, taking her hand to lead her away. “Say good night to Mr. Colville.”
The child turned and kissed him. “Good night,” she murmured.
“Good night, you sleepy little soul!” It seemed to Colville that he must be a pretty good man, after all, if this little thing loved him so.
“Do you always kiss Mr. Colville good night?” asked her mother when she began to undo her hair for her in her room.
“Sometimes. Don’t you think it’s nice?”
“Oh yes; nice enough.”
Colville sat by the window a long time thinking Mrs. Bowen might come back; but she did not return.
Mr. Waters came to see him the next afternoon at his hotel.
“Are you pretty comfortable here?” he asked.
“Well, it’s a change,” said Colville. “I miss the little one awfully.”
“She’s a winning child,” admitted the old man. “That combination of conventionality and naivete is very captivating. I notice it in the mother.”
“Yes, the mother has it too. Have you seen them today?”
“Yes; Mrs. Bowen was sorry to be out when you came.”
“I had the misfortune to miss them. I had a great mind to go again tonight.”
The old man said nothing to this. “The fact is,” Colville went on, “I’m so habituated to being there that I’m rather spoiled.”
“Ah, it’s a nice place,” Mr. Waters admitted.
“Of course I made all the haste I could to get away, and I have the reward of a good conscience. But I don’t find that the reward is very great.”
The old gentleman smiled. “The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt of it in my case,” said Colville. “If I’d consulted my own comfort and advantage, I should still be at Palazzo Pinti.”
“I dare say they would have been glad to keep you.”
“Do you really think so?” asked Colville, with sudden seriousness. “I wish you would tell me why. Have you any reason—grounds? Pshaw! I’m absurd!” He sank back into the easy-chair from whose depths he had pulled himself
