She laughed again, and regarded him with an air of humorous meditation.

“And that accounts for the unsuccess of ’A Man of Words’?”

“You might as well offer Francois Villon a banquet of Orient pearls.”

“You are bitterly hard on the Anglo-Saxon public.”

“Oh, no,” he disclaimed, “not hard—­but just.  I wish them all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste.”

“Oh, but surely,” she caught him up, “if their taste were greater, their prosperity would be less?”

“I don’t know,” said he.  “The Greeks were fairly prosperous, were n’t they?  And the Venetians?  And the French are not yet quite bankrupt.”

Still again she laughed—­always with that little air of humorous meditation.

“You—­you don’t exactly overwhelm one with compliments,” she observed.

He looked alarm, anxiety.

“Don’t I?  What have I neglected?” he cried.

“You ’ve never once evinced the slightest curiosity to learn what I think of the book in question.”

“Oh, I’m sure you like it,” he rejoined hardily.  “You have ‘the seeing eye.’”

“And yet I’m just a humble member of the Anglo-Saxon public.”

“No—­you’re a distinguished member of the Anglo-Saxon ‘remnant.’  Thank heaven, there’s a remnant, a little scattered remnant.  I’m perfectly sure you like ‘A Man of Words.’”

“‘Like it’ is a proposition so general.  Perhaps I am burning to tell someone what I think of it in detail.”

She smiled into his eyes, a trifle oddly.

“If you are, then I know someone who is burning to hear you,” he avowed.

“Well, then, I think—­I think . . . " she began, on a note of deliberation.  “But I ’m afraid, just now, it would take too long to formulate my thought.  Perhaps I’ll try another day.”

She gave him a derisory little nod—­and in a minute was well up the lawn, towards the castle.

Peter glared after her, his fists clenched, teeth set.

“You fiend!” he muttered.  Then, turning savagely upon himself, “You duffer!”

Nevertheless, that evening, he said to Marietta, “The plot thickens.  We’ve advanced a step.  We’ve reached what the vulgar call a psychological moment.  She’s seen my Portrait of a Lady.  But as yet, if you can believe me, she doesn’t dream who painted it; and she has n’t recognised the subject.  As if one were to face one’s image in the glass, and take it for another’s! 3—­I ’ll—­I ’ll double your wages—­if you will induce events to hurry up.”

However, as he spoke English, Marietta was in no position to profit by his offer.

XIII

Peter was walking in the high-road, on the other side of the river—­the great high-road that leads from Bergamo to Milan.

It was late in the afternoon, and already, in the west, the sky was beginning to put on some of its sunset splendours.  In the east, framed to Peter’s vision by parallel lines of poplars, it hung like a curtain of dark-blue velvet.