“The Alps,” he said in surprise.

“Gli Alpi—­si, signore.”  The man bowed, gathered up Aaron’s clothes, and silently retired.

Aaron watched through the window.  It was a frosty morning at the end of September, with a clear blue morning-sky, Alpine, and the watchful, snow-streaked mountain tops bunched in the distance, as if waiting.  There they were, hovering round, circling, waiting.  They reminded him of marvellous striped sky-panthers circling round a great camp:  the red-roofed city.  Aaron looked, and looked again.  In the near distance, under the house elm-tree tops were yellowing.  He felt himself changing inside his skin.

So he turned away to his coffee and eggs.  A little silver egg-cup with a curious little frill round it:  honey in a frail, iridescent glass bowl, gold-iridescent:  the charm of delicate and fine things.  He smiled half mockingly to himself.  Two instincts played in him:  the one, an instinct for fine, delicate things:  he had attractive hands; the other, an inclination to throw the dainty little table with all its niceties out of the window.  It evoked a sort of devil in him.

He took his bath:  the man had brought back his things:  he dressed and went downstairs.  No one in the lounge:  he went down to the ground floor:  no one in the big hall with its pillars of yellow marble and its gold arches, its enormous, dark, bluey-red carpet.  He stood before the great glass doors.  Some red flowers still were blooming in the tubs, on the steps, handsome:  and beautiful chrysanthemums in the wide portico.  Beyond, yellow leaves were already falling on the green grass and the neat drive.  Everywhere was silent and empty.  He climbed the wide stairs, sat in the long, upper lounge where the papers were.  He wanted his hat and coat, and did not know where to find them.  The windows looked on to a terraced garden, the hill rising steeply behind the house.  He wanted to go out.

So he opened more doors, and in a long drawing-room came upon five or six manservants, all in the grey house-jackets, all clean-shaven, neat, with neat black hair, all with dusters or brushes or feather brooms, and all frolicking, chattering, playing like so many monkeys.  They were all of the same neat, smallish size.  They were all laughing.  They rolled back a great rug as if it were some football game, one flew at the curtains.  And they merely looked at Aaron and went on chattering, and laughing and dusting.

Surprised, and feeling that he trespassed, he stood at the window a moment looking out.  The noise went on behind him.  So he turned, smiling, and asked for his hat, pointing to his head.  They knew at once what he wanted.  One of the fellows beckoned him away, down to the hall and to the long cupboard place where hats and coats and sticks were hung.  There was his hat; he put it on, while the man chattered to him pleasantly and unintelligibly, and opened for him the back door, into the garden.