a United States boat with a United States minister--there is one
here I've found out--it seems a lot safer than to trust to these foreign
ways. If you was to be married in Italian I should never be certain you
wouldn't wake up some morning and find yourself not married. And then
how should I feel!" As to the palace plan, she threw herself into it
with heavy alacrity. "I s'pose I've got to see you through," she said,
"and it will give me something to think about. I don't suppose you have
any intention that way, but an engaged couple isn't very good company."

It transpired that the _Merrythought_ would put out to the high seas on
the twenty-second, and it was in the flutter of their practical
adjustments to meet this date that Peter found the ten days of his
engagement move so swiftly; to engage servants, to interview
tradespeople, to prune the neglected garden--it was Savilla's notion
that they should do this themselves--all the stir of domestic life made
so many points of advantage to support him above that dryness of despair
from which he had moments of feeling himself all too hardly rescued. He
had come up out of it sufficiently by the help that Italy afforded, to
glimpse once more the country of his dreams, only by this act of his
marriage to turn his back on it forever. Savilla Dassonville was a dear
little thing; if it came to that, a revered and valued thing, but she
was not, he had never pretended it, the Lovely Lady, and the door that
shut them in as man and wife was to shut _her_ forever out of his life.
And yet though this was his accepted, his official position, it was
remarkable even to himself how much less frequently as the preparations
for his marriage went forward, he found himself obliged to fall back
upon it; how much more he projected himself into his future as the
adored and protecting male. He recalled in this connection that the
Princess had said to him that he should visit his House no more, and it
was part of the proof of the notion he entertained toward himself as a
man done with the imaginative life, that he accepted it with no more
fuss about it. He had in fact his mind's eye on a piece of ground which
Lessing could buy for him, on the river, an hour from the city, where he
could manage for Savilla at least, a generous substitute for dreams, and
a situation for himself for which he began to discover more appetite
than he would have believed. It was likely, he thought, that he would
himself ta