It was no more than he expected; but it put an end to all thoughts of a more hopeful kind.  He walked up and down the Piazza smoking, till midnight, counting the hours till he could reach London, and revolving the phrases of a telegram to be sent to his solicitor before starting.

Kitty made no sign or sound when he entered her room.  Her fair head was turned away from him, and all was dark.  He could hardly believe that she was asleep; but it was a relief to him to accept her pretence of it, and to escape all further conversation.  He himself slept but little.  The mere profundity of the Venetian silence teased him; it reminded him how far he was from home.

Two images pursued him—­of Kitty writing the book, while he was away electioneering or toiling at his new office—­and then, of his returns to Haggart—­tired or triumphant—­on many a winter evening, of her glad rush into his arms, her sparkling face on his breast.

Or again, he conjured up the scene when the MS. had been shown to Darrell—­his pretence of disapproval, his sham warnings, and the smile on his sallow face as he walked off with it.  Ashe looked back to the early days of his friendship with Darrell, when he, Ashe, was one of the leaders at Eton, popular with the masters in spite of his incorrigible idleness, and popular with the boys because of his bodily prowess, and Darrell had been a small, sickly, bullied colleger.  Scene after scene recurred to him, from their later relations at Oxford also.  There was a kind of deliberation in the way in which he forced his thoughts into this channel; it made an outlet for a fierce bitterness of spirit, which some imperious instinct forbade him to spend on Kitty.

He dozed in the later hours of the night, and was roused by something touching his hand, which lay outside the bedclothes.  Again the little head!—­and the soft curls.  Kitty was there—­crouched beside him—­weeping.  There flashed into his mind an image of the night in London when she had come to him thus; and unwelcome as the whole remembrance was, he was conscious of a sudden swelling wave of pity and passion.  What if he sprang up, caught her in his arms, forgave her, and bade the world go hang!

No!  The impulse passed, and in his turn he feigned sleep.  The thought of her long deceit, of the selfish wilfulness wherewith she had requited deep love and easy trust, was too much; it seared his heart.  And there was another and a subtler influence.  To have forgiven so easily would have seemed treachery to those high ambitions and ideals from which—­as he thought, only too certainly—­she had now cut him off.  It was part of his surviving youth that the catastrophe seemed to him so absolute.  Any thought of the fresh efforts which would be necessary for the reconquering of his position was no less sickening to him than that of the immediate discomforts and humiliations to be undergone.  He would go back to books and amusement; and in the idling of the future there would be plenty of time for love-making.