And a gleam almost of happiness seemed to light her up.  She seemed like one who had been kept in a horrible enchanted castle—­for years and years.  Oh, a horrible enchanted castle, with wet walls of emotions and ponderous chains of feelings and a ghastly atmosphere of must-be.  She felt she had seen through the opening door a crack of sunshine, and thin, pure, light outside air, outside, beyond this dank and beastly dungeon of feelings and moral necessity.  Ugh!—­she shuddered convulsively at what had been.  She looked at her little husband.  Chains of necessity all round him:  a little jailor.  Yet she was fond of him.  If only he would throw away the castle keys.  He was a little gnome.  What did he clutch the castle-keys so tight for?

Aaron looked at her.  He knew that they understood one another, he and she.  Without any moral necessity or any other necessity.  Outside—­ they had got outside the castle of so-called human life.  Outside the horrible, stinking human castle Of life.  A bit of true, limpid freedom.  Just a glimpse.

“Charming!” said the Marchese.  “Truly charming!  But what was it you played?”

Aaron told him.

“But truly delightful.  I say, won’t you play for us one of these Saturdays?  And won’t you let me take the accompaniment?  I should be charmed, charmed if you would.”

“All right,” said Aaron.

“Do drink another cocktail,” said his hostess.

He did so.  And then he rose to leave.

“Will you stay to dinner?” said the Marchesa.  “We have two people coming—­two Italian relatives of my husband.  But—­”

No, Aaron declined to stay to dinner.

“Then won’t you come on—­let me see—­on Wednesday?  Do come on Wednesday.  We are alone.  And do bring the flute.  Come at half-past six, as today, will you?  Yes?”

Aaron promised—­and then he found himself in the street.  It was half-past seven.  Instead of returning straight home, he crossed the Ponte Vecchio and walked straight into the crowd.  The night was fine now.  He had his overcoat over his arm, and in a sort of trance or frenzy, whirled away by his evening’s experience, and by the woman, he strode swiftly forward, hardly heeding anything, but rushing blindly on through all the crowd, carried away by his own feelings, as much as if he had been alone, and all these many people merely trees.

Leaving the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele a gang of soldiers suddenly rushed round him, buffeting him in one direction, whilst another gang, swinging round the corner, threw him back helpless again into the midst of the first gang.  For some moments he struggled among the rude, brutal little mob of grey-green coarse uniforms that smelt so strong of soldiers.  Then, irritated, he found himself free again, shaking himself and passing on towards the cathedral.  Irritated, he now put on his overcoat and buttoned it to the throat, closing himself in, as it were, from the brutal insolence of the Sunday night mob of men.  Before, he had been walking through them in a rush of naked feeling, all exposed to their tender mercies.  He now gathered himself together.