She still continued to sit with her face averted from him; and, after another pause, finished her speech only by a little sad shake of her head.

Now the truth was that Ludovico often did doubt very much whether Paolina really loved him.  He did not understand the position in which they stood towards each other at all.  Here was a little utterly unpretending artist, dependent on no one but herself, owing no duty to any one, to whom he had been making love for the last eight months, as he had never in his life made love before, who assured him that she loved him; how was it that she had not been his mistress months and months ago?  How to account for so strange a phenomenon?  He knew very well, that if the exact truth of his position with regard to the little Venetian artist were known or guessed at by any of the men with whom he lived, he would have appeared to them an object of the utmost ridicule,—­a dupe,—­a fool of the very first water.  What on earth could he have been about all the time?

And there were moments in which he was tempted to think the same of himself; bitter moments of cynical world-wisdom, in which he scoffed at himself for having been led to play the part he had played for these last eight months.  He would resolve at such moments to “speak plainly” to Paolina; and, if such plain-speaking failed of the effect it was intended to produce, to put her out of his mind and never waste a minute or a thought upon her again.

But such plain-speaking had never got itself spoken,—­had seemed, when he was in presence of the intended object of it, utterly impossible to be spoken.  And as for the other alternative, he knew at the bottom of his heart, that it was as much out of his power to put it in practice, as it was to forget his own identity.

Something there was in the girl different from anything he had ever known in any other specimen of the sex he had ever become acquainted with.  Something too there unmistakably was in his feeling towards her very different from aught that he had ever felt before.  What spell had come over him?  And what the deuce was the nature of her power over him?  And what the deuce was her own meaning, and feeling, and the motives of her conduct?

It really was necessary, however, that they should in some way come to understand each other.  If he had been becoming for some time past discontented with the state of matters between them, it was evident that Paolina had been becoming ill at ease and unhappy also.  In some fashion or other some more or less plain speaking was evidently needed.

And Paolina herself?  What was her feeling on the subject?  Whence did her unmistakable malaise, distraught behaviour in Ludovico’s presence, paling cheeks, hours of reverie, when she should have been busily at work—­whence did all this come?  What was really in her mind when she told him that doubtless they both loved each other, and then ended her words with a “but,” and a sad shake of her drooping little head?