“I wonder what would have happened, if I, or some one else, had tried.”

“You would have spent the night in prison with a few kindred spirits.  After all, that would have been better than making love to old Donna Tullia and her young friend.”

Orsino laughed.

“You have good eyes,” he said.

“So have you, Orsino.  Use them.  You will see something odd if you look where you were looking this morning.  Do you know what sort of a place this world is?”

“It is a dull place.  I have found that out already.”

“You are mistaken.  It is hell.  Do you mind calling that cab?”

Orsino stared a moment at his companion, and then hailed the passing conveyance.

CHAPTER VI.

Orsino had shown less anxiety to see Madame d’Aranjuez than might perhaps have been expected.  In the ten days which had elapsed between the sitting at Gouache’s studio and the first of January he had only once made an attempt to find her at home, and that attempt had failed.  He had not even seen her passing in the street, and he had not been conscious of any uncontrollable desire to catch a glimpse of her at any price.

But he had not forgotten her existence as he would certainly have forgotten that of a wholly indifferent person in the same time.  On the contrary, he had thought of her frequently and had indulged in many speculations concerning her, wondering among other matters why he did not take more trouble to see her since she occupied his thoughts so much.  He did not know that he was in reality hesitating, for he would not have acknowledged to himself that he could be in danger of falling seriously in love.  He was too young to admit such a possibility, and the character which he admired and meant to assume was altogether too cold and superior to such weaknesses.  To do him justice, he was really not of the sort to fall in love at first sight.  Persons capable of a self-imposed dualism rarely are, for the second nature they build up on the foundation of their own is never wholly artificial.  The disposition to certain modes of thought and habits of bearing is really present, as is sufficiently proved by their admiration of both.  Very shy persons, for instance, invariably admire very self-possessed ones, and in trying to imitate them occasionally exhibit a cold-blooded arrogance which is amazing.  Timothy Titmouse secretly looks up to Don Juan as his ideal, and after half a lifetime of failure outdoes his model, to the horror of his friends.  Dionysus masks as Hercules, and the fox is sometimes not unsuccessful in his saint’s disguise.  Those who have been intimate with a great actor know that the characters he plays best are not all assumed; there is a little of each in his own nature.  There is a touch of the real Othello in Salvini—­there is perhaps a strain of the melancholy Scandinavian in English Irving.