“We’d better be going inside, anyhow,” said Argyle.  “Some of you will be taking cold.”

“Aaron,” said Lilly.  “Is it true for you?”

“Nearly,” said Aaron, looking into the quiet, half-amused, yet frightening eyes of the other man.  “Or it has been.”

“A miss is as good as a mile,” laughed Lilly, rising and picking up his chair to take it indoors.  And the laughter of his voice was so like a simple, deliberate amiability, that Aaron’s heart really stood still for a second.  He knew that Lilly was alone—­as far as he, Aaron, was concerned.  Lilly was alone—­and out of his isolation came his words, indifferent as to whether they came or not.  And he left his friends utterly to their own choice.  Utterly to their own choice.  Aaron felt that Lilly was there, existing in life, yet neither asking for connection nor preventing any connection.  He was present, he was the real centre of the group.  And yet he asked nothing of them, and he imposed nothing.  He left each to himself, and he himself remained just himself:  neither more nor less.  And there was a finality about it, which was at once maddening and fascinating.  Aaron felt angry, as if he were half insulted by the other man’s placing the gift of friendship or connection so quietly back in the giver’s hands.  Lilly would receive no gift of friendship in equality.  Neither would he violently refuse it.  He let it lie unmarked.  And yet at the same time Aaron knew that he could depend on the other man for help, nay, almost for life itself—­so long as it entailed no breaking of the intrinsic isolation of Lilly’s soul.  But this condition was also hateful.  And there was also a great fascination in it.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MARCHESA

So Aaron dined with the Marchesa and Manfredi.  He was quite startled when his hostess came in:  she seemed like somebody else.  She seemed like a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance.  She wore a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour, with some kind of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides.  It was terribly modern, short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and breast and all her beautiful white arms.  Round her throat was a collar of dark-blue sapphires.  Her hair was done low, almost to the brows, and heavy, like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing.  She was most carefully made up—­yet with that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red, which was quite intentional, and which frightened Aaron.  He thought her wonderful, and sinister.  She affected him with a touch of horror.  She sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet.  She had tapestry shoes, blue and gold:  and almost one could see her toes:  metallic naked.  The gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side.  Aaron could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot.  It was as if she were dusted with dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity.