dache, he let her go up to her room and
wandered out into the dimly lit streets to renewed communion with his
problems.

They hung on him insistently as darkness fell, and Siena grew vocal with
that shrill diversity of sounds that breaks, on summer nights, from
every cleft of the masonry in old Italian towns. Then the moon rose,
unfolding depth by depth the lines of the antique land; and Ralph,
leaning against an old brick parapet, and watching each silver-blue
remoteness disclose itself between the dark masses of the middle
distance, felt his spirit enlarged and pacified. For the first time, as
his senses thrilled to the deep touch of beauty, he asked himself if out
of these floating and fugitive vibrations he might not build something
concrete and stable, if even such dull common cares as now oppressed him
might not become the motive power of creation. If he could only, on
the spot, do something with all the accumulated spoils of the last
months--something that should both put money into his pocket and harmony
into the rich confusion of his spirit! "I'll write--I'll write: that
must be what the whole thing means," he said to himself, with a vague
clutch at some solution which should keep him a little longer hanging
half-way down the steep of disenchantment.

He would have stayed on, heedless of time, to trace the ramifications
of his idea in the complex beauty of the scene, but for the longing to
share his mood with Undine. For the last few months every thought and
sensation had been instantly transmuted into such emotional impulses
and, though the currents of communication between himself and Undine
were neither deep nor numerous, each fresh rush of feeling seemed
strong enough to clear a way to her heart. He hurried back, almost
breathlessly, to the inn; but even as he knocked at her door the subtle
emanation of other influences seemed to arrest and chill him.

She had put out the lamp, and sat by the window in the moonlight, her
head propped on a listless hand. As Marvell entered she turned; then,
without speaking, she looked away again.

He was used to this mute reception, and had learned that it had no
personal motive, but was the result of an extremely simplified social
code. Mr. and Mrs. Spragg seldom spoke to each other when they met, and
words of greeting seemed almost unknown to their domestic vocabulary.
Marvell, at first, had fancied that his own warmth would call forth a
response from his wife, who ha