ces.

He escaped as soon as possible back to his far-off regions, lonely and
cheerless, away above. But he rather liked the far-off remoteness in
the big old Florentine house: he did not mind the peculiar dark, uncosy
dreariness. It was not really dreary: only indifferent. Indifferent
to comfort, indifferent to all homeliness and cosiness. The over-big
furniture trying to be impressive, but never to be pretty or bright
or cheerful. There it stood, ugly and apart. And there let it
stand.--Neither did he mind the lack of fire, the cold sombreness of his
big bedroom. At home, in England, the bright grate and the ruddy fire,
the thick hearth-rug and the man's arm-chair, these had been inevitable.
And now he was glad to get away from it all. He was glad not to have a
cosy hearth, and his own arm-chair. He was glad to feel the cold, and to
breathe the unwarmed air. He preferred the Italian way of no fires, no
heating. If the day was cold, he was willing to be cold too. If it was
dark, he was willing to be dark. The cosy brightness of a real home--it
had stifled him till he felt his lungs would burst. The horrors of real
domesticity. No, the Italian brutal way was better.

So he put his overcoat over his knee, and studied some music he had
bought in Milan: some Pergolesi and the Scarlatti he liked, and some
Corelli. He preferred frail, sensitive, abstract music, with not much
feeling in it, but a certain limpidity and purity. Night fell as he sat
reading the scores. He would have liked to try certain pieces on his
flute. But his flute was too sensitive, it winced from the new strange
surroundings, and would not blossom.

Dinner sounded at last--at eight o'clock, or something after. He had to
learn to expect the meals always forty minutes late. Down he went, down
the long, dark, lonely corridors and staircases. The dining room was
right downstairs. But he had a little table to himself near the door,
the elderly women were at some little distance. The only other men were
Agostmo, the unshapely waiter, and an Italian duke, with wife and child
and nurse, the family sitting all together at a table halfway down the
room, and utterly pre-occupied with a little yellow dog.

However, the food was good enough, and sufficient, and the waiter and
the maid-servant cheerful and bustling. Everything felt happy-go-lucky
and informal, there was no particular atmosphere. Nobody put on any
airs, because nobody in the Nardini took any notice i