and fearfully examined the
woman that I saw in the glass, as if to discern what sort of woman she
truly was, and what was the root of her character. I hesitated and
snatched up my gloves. I wanted to collect my thoughts, and I could not.
It was impossible to think clearly. I moved in the room, dazed. I stood
by the tumbled bed, fingering the mosquito curtains. They might have been
a veil behind which was obscured the magic word of enlightenment I
needed. I opened the door, shut it suddenly, and held the knob tight,
defying an imagined enemy outside. 'Oh!' I muttered at last, angry with
myself, 'what is the use of all this? You know you must go down to him.
He's waiting for you. Show a little common-sense and go without so much
fuss.' And so I descended the stairs swiftly and guiltily, relieved that
no one happened to see me. In any case, I decided, nothing could induce
me to yield to him after my letter and after what had passed in the
train. The affair was beyond argument. I felt that I could not yield, and
that though it meant the ruin of happiness by obstinacy, I could not
yield. I shrank from yielding in that moment as men shrink from public
repentance.

He had not moved from his post in the garden. We shook hands. A band
of Italian musicians wandered into the garden and began to sing Verdi
to a vigorous thrumming of guitars. They sang as only Italians can
sing--as naturally as they breathed, and with a rich and overflowing
innocent joy in the art which Nature had taught them. They sang loudly,
swingingly, glancing full of naive hope up at the windows of the vast,
unresponsive hotel.

'So you are still in Mentone,' I ventured.

'Yes,' he said. 'Come for a walk.'

'But--'

'Come for a walk.'

'Very well,' I consented. 'As I am?'

'As you are. I saw you all in white on the balcony, and I was determined
to fetch you out.'

'But could you see who it was from the road?'

'Of course I could. I knew in an instant.'

We descended, he a couple of paces in front of me, the narrow zigzag path
leading down between two other hotels to the shore road.

'What will happen now?' I asked myself wildly. My head swam.

It seemed that nothing would happen. We turned eastwards, walking slowly,
and I began to resume my self-control. Only the simple and the humble
were abroad at that early hour: purveyors of food, in cheerfully rattling
carts, or hauling barrows with the help of grave and formidable dogs;
washers and cleane