aking it is on its guard.
And so must you be, or you'll go under. Sleeping or waking, man or
woman, God or the devil, keep your guard over yourself. Keep your guard
over yourself, lest worse befall you. No man is robbed unless he incites
a robber. No man is murdered unless he attracts a murderer. Then be not
robbed: it lies within your own power. And be not murdered. Or if you
are, you deserve it. Keep your guard over yourself, now, always and
forever. Yes, against God quite as hard as against the devil. He's fully
as dangerous to you....

Thus thinking, not in his mind but in his soul, his active, living soul,
he gathered his equanimity once more, and accepted the fact. So he rose
and tidied himself for dinner. His face was now set, and still. His
heart also was still--and fearless. Because its sentinel was stationed.
Stationed, stationed for ever.

And Aaron never forgot. After this, it became essential to him to feel
that the sentinel stood guard in his own heart. He felt a strange unease
the moment he was off his guard. Asleep or awake, in the midst of the
deepest passion or the suddenest love, or in the throes of greatest
excitement or bewilderment, somewhere, some corner of himself was awake
to the fact that the sentinel of the soul must not sleep, no, never, not
for one instant.

CHAPTER XVII. HIGH UP OVER THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE

Aaron and Lilly sat in Argyle's little loggia, high up under the eaves
of the small hotel, a sort of long attic-terrace just under the roof,
where no one would have suspected it. It was level with the grey conical
roof of the Baptistery. Here sat Aaron and Lilly in the afternoon, in
the last of the lovely autumn sunshine. Below, the square was
already cold in shadow, the pink and white and green Baptistery rose
lantern-shaped as from some sea-shore, cool, cold and wan now the sun
was gone. Black figures, innumerable black figures, curious because they
were all on end, up on end--Aaron could not say why he expected them to
be horizontal--little black figures upon end, like fishes that swim on
their tails, wiggled endlessly across the piazza, little carriages on
natural all-fours rattled tinily across, the yellow little tram-cars,
like dogs slipped round the corner. The balcony was so high up, that
the sound was ineffectual. The upper space, above the houses, was
nearer than the under-currents of the noisy town. Sunlight, lovely full
sunlight, lingered warm and still on the balco