with his stick at the animal's
unmelodious muzzle, and then rapidly left the house. He saw Mrs. Light's
carriage waiting at the door, and heard afterwards that Christina went
home to dinner.

A couple of days later he went, for a fortnight, to Florence. He had
twenty minds to leave Italy altogether; and at Florence he could at
least more freely decide upon his future movements. He felt profoundly,
incurably disgusted. Reflective benevolence stood prudently aside, and
for the time touched the source of his irritation with no softening
side-lights.

It was the middle of March, and by the middle of March in Florence the
spring is already warm and deep. He had an infinite relish for the place
and the season, but as he strolled by the Arno and paused here and there
in the great galleries, they failed to soothe his irritation. He was
sore at heart, and as the days went by the soreness deepened rather than
healed. He felt as if he had a complaint against fortune; good-natured
as he was, his good-nature this time quite declined to let it pass. He
had tried to be wise, he had tried to be kind, he had embarked upon an
estimable enterprise; but his wisdom, his kindness, his energy, had been
thrown back in his face. He was disappointed, and his disappointment
had an angry spark in it. The sense of wasted time, of wasted hope and
faith, kept him constant company. There were times when the beautiful
things about him only exasperated his discontent. He went to the Pitti
Palace, and Raphael's Madonna of the Chair seemed, in its soft serenity,
to mock him with the suggestion of unattainable repose. He lingered on
the bridges at sunset, and knew that the light was enchanting and the
mountains divine, but there seemed to be something horribly invidious
and unwelcome in the fact. He felt, in a word, like a man who has been
cruelly defrauded and who wishes to have his revenge. Life owed him, he
thought, a compensation, and he would be restless and resentful until he
found it. He knew--or he seemed to know--where he should find it; but he
hardly told himself, and thought of the thing under mental protest, as a
man in want of money may think of certain funds that he holds in trust.
In his melancholy meditations the idea of something better than all
this, something that might softly, richly interpose, something that
might reconcile him to the future, something that might make one's
tenure of life deep and zealous instead of harsh and uneven--