ould see. And my maid
Giuseppina came running into my room, saying: 'Signora! Signora! Si
alza! Subito! Signora! Vengono su!'--and I said, 'Chi? Chi sono chi
vengono? Chi?'--'I Novaresi! I Novaresi vengono su. Vengono qui!'--I
got out of bed and went to the window. And there they were, in the dead
light, rushing up to the house, through the trees. It was so awful, I
haven't been able to forget it all day."

"Tell me what the words are in English," said Aaron.

"Why," she said, "get up, get up--the Novaresi, the people of Novara
are coming up--vengono su--they are coming up--the Novara
people--work-people. I can't forget it. It was so real, I can't believe
it didn't actually happen."

"Ah," said Aaron. "It will never happen. I know, that whatever one
foresees, and FEELS has happened, never happens in real life. It sort of
works itself off through the imagining of it."

"Well, it was almost more real to me than real life," said his hostess.

"Then it will never happen in real life," he said.

Luncheon passed, and coffee. The party began to disperse--Lady Franks to
answer more letters, with the aid of Arthur's wife--some to sleep, some
to walk. Aaron escaped once more through the big gates. This time he
turned his back on the town and the mountains, and climbed up the hill
into the country. So he went between the banks and the bushes, watching
for unknown plants and shrubs, hearing the birds, feeling the influence
of a new soil. At the top of the hill he saw over into vineyards, and a
new strange valley with a winding river, and jumbled, entangled hills.
Strange wild country so near the town. It seemed to keep an almost
virgin wildness--yet he saw the white houses dotted here and there.

Just below him was a peasant house: and on a little loggia in the sun
two peasants in white shirtsleeves and black Sunday suits were sitting
drinking wine, and talking, talking. Peasant youths in black hats, their
sweethearts in dark stuff dresses, wearing no hat, but a black silk or
a white silk scarf, passed slowly along the little road just below the
ridge. None looked up to see Aaron sitting there alone. From some hidden
place somebody was playing an accordion, a jerky sound in the still
afternoon. And away beyond lay the unchanging, mysterious valley, and
the infolding, mysterious hills of Italy.

Returning back again another way, he lost himself at the foot of the
hill in new and deserted suburb streets--unfinished streets of