“You’ll come again.  We’ll be like this again?” she whispered.

And it was hard for him to realise that this was that other woman, who had sat so silently on the sofa, so darkly and reservedly, at the tea at Algy’s.

“Yes!  I will!  Goodbye now!” And he kissed her, and walked straight out of the room.  Quickly he took his coat and his hat, quickly, and left the house.  In his nostrils was still the scent with which the bed linen was faintly scented—­he did not know what it was.  But now he wiped his face and his mouth, to wipe it away.

He had eaten nothing since coffee that morning, and was hungry, faint-feeling.  And his face, and his mind, felt withered.  Curiously he felt blasted as if blighted by some electricity.  And he knew, he knew quite well he was only in possession of a tithe of his natural faculties.  And in his male spirit he felt himself hating her:  hating her deeply, damnably.  But he said to himself:  “No, I won’t hate her.  I won’t hate her.”

So he went on, over the Ponte Vecchio, where the jeweller’s windows on the bridge were already blazing with light, on into the town.  He wanted to eat something, so he decided to go to a shop he knew, where one could stand and eat good tiny rolls split into truffle or salami sandwiches, and drink Marsala.  So one after the other he ate little truffle rolls, and drank a few glasses of Marsala.  And then he did not know what to do.  He did not want to eat any more, he had had what he wanted.  His hunger had been more nervous than sensual.

So he went into the street.  It was just growing dark and the town was lighting up.  He felt curiously blazed, as if some flame or electric power had gone through him and withered his vital tissue.  Blazed, as if some kind of electric flame had run over him and withered him.  His brain felt withered, his mind had only one of its many-sighted eyes left open and unscorched.  So many of the eyes of his mind were scorched now and sightless.

Yet a restlessness was in his nerves.  What should he do?  He remembered he had a letter in his pocket from Sir William Franks.  Sir William had still teased him about his fate and his providence, in which he, Aaron, was supposed to trust.  “I shall be very glad to hear from you, and to know how your benevolent Providence—­or was yours a Fate—­has treated you since we saw you—–­”

So, Aaron turned away, and walked to the post office.  There he took paper, and sat down at one of the tables in the writing room, and wrote his answer.  It was very strange, writing thus when most of his mind’s eyes were scorched, and it seemed he could hardly see to hold the pen, to drive it straight across the paper.  Yet write he must.  And most of his faculties being quenched or blasted for the moment, he wrote perhaps his greatest, or his innermost, truth.—­“I don’t want my Fate or my Providence to treat me well.  I don’t want kindness or love.