“Ego Te amare Tantum!  Non VOLERE?  Non PIACERE?  Non CAPIRE?  O Lord, can’t you understand?”

It was Mr. Marten’s voice.  Mr. Marten was being romantic.  No answer came to his fervent pleadings.  Perhaps they were not coherent enough.  He began again, tremolo agitato, con molto SENTIMENTO: 

“O Ego Te amare Tantum!  Nemo SAPIT Nihil.  DUCHESSA in Barca AQUATICA cum Magna COMPANIA.  REDIBIT TARDISSIMO.  NIENTE Timor.  Amare MULTISSIMO!  Ego MORIRE fine Te.  MORIRE.  MORITURUS.  Capito?  Non CAPIRE?  Oh, CAPIRE be blowed!”

There was a short pause.  The language seems to have been understood this time.  For, amid a ripple of laughter, a rich Southern voice was heard to say with a sigh of mock resignation: 

“Sia FATTA La VOLONTA di dio!”

Then silence. . . .

Denis turned.  He walked up the steps as in a dream, neither slowly nor fast.  No one was ever more unhappy, though he scarcely felt as yet the depths of his own humiliation.  It was more like a stab—­a numbing assassin-like stab.  He could hear the beatings of his heart.

He reached the upper level of the town, he knew not how.

All lay quiet as he found his way among the familiar buildings.  It was after midnight; most of the lamps had been extinguished.  The streets were deserted.  He heard, in the distance, the song of a drunken wayfarer reeling homewards from a tavern or from the Club.

In one of the little roadways that converge upon the market-place something was astir.  It was a dim phantom of willowy outline, swaying capriciously to and fro, like a black feather tossed by the wind.  Miss Wilberforce!  She fluttered down a doorstep and began crooning a vulgar song about “Billy had a letter for to go on board a ship.”  Denis moved to the other side of the narrow path, hoping to escape unobserved.  The light was too strong.

“My young friend,” she cried in quite a hoarse and altered tone of voice, “we should know each other!  We’ve had the pleasure haven’t we?  Been down to the sea, have you?  And what are the wild waves saying?”

Denis stood there, petrified with disgust.  Was it possible?  Was this the lady who had charmed him the other day?  Who had spoken of England and conjured up the memories of his own home in the Midlands?  With a playful gesture, she sent her hat careering across the street and began to fumble at her breast, unlacing or unbuttoning something.  It was horrible, in the moonlight.

A boot, flying merrily over his head, recalled him to his senses.  He turned to go, and had already made a few paces when the voice croaked after him: 

“Does your mother know you’re out?”

CHAPTER XIII