“I should hardly like to send Marietta.  I ’m afraid there is no one else.  But upon my word, I should enjoy going myself.”

She shook her head, smiling at him with mock compassion.

“Would you?  Poor man, poor man!  That is an enjoyment which you will have to renounce.  One must n’t expect too much in this sad life.”

“Well, then,” said Peter, “I have an expedient.  If you can walk a somewhat narrow plank—?”

“Yes—?” questioned she.

“I think I can improvise a bridge across the river.”

“I believe the rain has stopped,” said the priest, looking towards the window.

Peter, manning his soul for the inevitable, got up, went to the door, opened it, stuck out his head.

“Yes,” he acknowledged, while his heart sank within him, “the rain has stopped.”

And now the storm departed almost as rapidly as it had arrived.  In the north the sky was already clear, blue and hard-looking —­a wall of lapis-lazuli.  The dark cloud-canopy was drifting to the south.  Suddenly the sun came out, flashing first from the snows of Monte Sfiorito, then, in an instant, flooding the entire prospect with a marvellous yellow light, ethereal amber; whilst long streamers of tinted vapour—­columns of pearl-dust, one might have fancied—­rose to meet it; and all wet surfaces, leaves, lawns, tree-trunks, housetops, the bare crags of the Gnisi, gleamed in a wash of gold.

Puffs of fresh air blew into the kitchen, filling it with the keen sweet odour of wet earth.  The priest and the Duchessa and Emilia joined Peter at the open door.

“Oh, your poor, poor garden!” the Duchessa cried.

His garden had suffered a good deal, to be sure.  The flowers lay supine, their faces beaten into the mud; the greensward was littered with fallen leaves and twigs—­and even in one or two places whole branches had been broken from the trees; on the ground about each rose-bush a snow of pink rose-petals lay scattered; in the paths there were hundreds of little pools, shining in the sun like pools of fire.

“There’s nothing a gardener can’t set right,” said Peter, feeling no doubt that here was a trifling tax upon the delights the storm had procured him.

“And oh, our poor, poor hats!” said the Duchessa, eyeing ruefully those damaged pieces of finery.  “I fear no gardener can ever set them right.”

“It sounds inhospitable,” said Peter, “but I suppose I had better go and build your bridge.”

So he threw a ladder athwart the river, and laid the planks in place, as he had seen Gigi do the day before.

“How ingenious—­and, like all great things, how simple,” laughed the Duchessa.

Peter waved his hand, as who should modestly deprecate applause.  But, I ’m ashamed to own, he didn’t disclaim the credit of the invention.

“It will require some nerve,” she reflected, looking at the narrow planks, the foaming green water.  “However—­”