Peter looked at these things; and, it is to be presumed, he saw them.  But, for all the joy they gave him, he, this cultivator of the sense of beauty, might have been the basest unit of his own purblind Anglo-Saxon public.  They were the background for an absent figure.  They were the stage-accessories of a drama whose action was arrested.  They were an empty theatre.

He tried to read.  He had brought a trunkful of books to Villa Floriano; but that book had been left behind which could fix his interest now.

He tried to write—­and wondered, in a kind of daze, that any man should ever have felt the faintest ambition to do a thing so thankless and so futile.

“I shall never write again.  Writing,” he generalised, and possibly not without some reason, “when it is n’t the sordidest of trades, is a mere fatuous assertion of one’s egotism.  Breaking stones in the street were a nobler occupation; weaving ropes of sand were better sport.  The only things that are worth writing are inexpressible, and can’t be written.  The only things that can be written are obvious and worthless—­the very crackling of thorns under a pot.  Oh, why does n’t she turn up?”

And the worst of it was that at any moment, for aught he knew, she might turn up.  That was the worst of it, and the best.  It kept hope alive, only to torture hope.  It encouraged him to wait, to watch, to expect; to linger in his garden, gazing hungry-eyed up the lawns of Ventirose, striving to pierce the foliage that embowered the castle; to wander the country round-about, scanning every vista, scrutinising every shape and shadow, a tweed-clad Gastibelza.  At any moment, indeed, she might turn up; but the days passed—­the hypocritic days—­and she did not turn up.

Marietta, the kind soul, noticing his despondency, sought in divers artless ways to cheer him.

One evening she burst into his sitting-room with the effect of a small explosion, excitement in every line of her brown old face and wiry little figure.

“The fireflies!  The fireflies, Signorino!” she cried, with strenuous gestures.

“What fireflies?” asked he, with phlegm.

“It is the feast of St. Dominic.  The fireflies have arrived.  They arrive every year on the feast of St. Dominic.  They are the beads of his rosary.  They are St. Dominic’s Aves.  There are thousands of them.  Come, Signorino, Come and see.”

Her black eyes snapped.  She waved her hands urgently towards the window.

Peter languidly got up, languidly crossed the room, looked out.

There were, in truth, thousands of them, thousands and thousands of tiny primrose flames, circling, fluttering, rising, sinking, in the purple blackness of the night, like snowflakes in a wind, palpitating like hearts of living gold—­Jove descending upon Danae invisible.

“Son carin’, eh?” cried eager Marietta.