Aaron?"

"Not at all. I hate Misters, always."

"Yes, so do I. I like one name only."

The little officer seemed very winning and delightful to Aaron this
evening--and Aaron began to like him extremely. But the dominating
consciousness in the room was the woman's.

"DO you agree, Mr. Sisson?" said the Marchesa. "Do you agree that the
mock-innocence and the sham-wistfulness of Botticelli's Venus are her
great charms?"

"I don't think she is at all charming, as a person," said Aaron. "As
a particular woman, she makes no impression on me at all. But as a
picture--and the fresh air, particularly the fresh air. She doesn't seem
so much a woman, you know, as the kind of out-of-doors morning-feelings
at the seaside."

"Quite! A sort of sea-scape of a woman. With a perfectly sham innocence.
Are you as keen on innocence as Manfredi is?"

"Innocence?" said Aaron. "It's the sort of thing I don't have much
feeling about."

"Ah, I know you," laughed the soldier wickedly. "You are the sort of man
who wants to be Anthony to Cleopatra. Ha-ha!"

Aaron winced as if struck. Then he too smiled, flattered. Yet he felt
he had been struck! Did he want to be Anthony to Cleopatra? Without
knowing, he was watching the Marchesa. And she was looking away, but
knew he was watching her. And at last she turned her eyes to his, with a
slow, dark smile, full of pain and fuller still of knowledge. A strange,
dark, silent look of knowledge she gave him: from so far away, it
seemed. And he felt all the bonds that held him melting away. His eyes
remained fixed and gloomy, but with his mouth he smiled back at her. And
he was terrified. He knew he was sulking towards her--sulking towards
her. And he was terrified. But at the back of his mind, also, he knew
there was Lilly, whom he might depend on. And also he wanted to sink
towards her. The flesh and blood of him simply melted out, in desire
towards her. Cost what may, he must come to her. And yet he knew at the
same time that, cost what may, he must keep the power to recover himself
from her. He must have his cake and eat it.

And she became Cleopatra to him. "Age cannot wither, nor custom stale--"
To his instinctive, unwilled fancy, she was Cleopatra.

They went in to dinner, and he sat on her right hand. It was a smallish
table, with a very few daisy-flowers: everything rather frail, and
sparse. The food the same--nothing very heavy, all rather exquisite.
They drank hock. And he was aware of