". . . Rocca di Papa . . ." someone had said. Or had he dreamed it? He
awoke with an inward bound, like a man springing up from sleep at a
sudden noise. His first look was for Marise. She was pale. He had not
dreamed it.

The voice went on . . . the newcomer's, the one they called Eugenia . . .
yes, she had known them in Italy. Marise had just said they had been
friends before her marriage.

The voice went on. How he listened as though crouched before the keyhole
of a door! Only three or four sentences, quite casual and trivial in
content, pronounced in that self-consciously cosmopolitan accent. Then
the voice stopped.

It had said enough for him. Now he knew. Now he had that clue.

He had the sensation of rising to his full height, exultantly, every
faculty as alert as though he had never been drugged to sleep by those
weak notions of renunciation. The consciousness of power was like a
sweet taste in his mouth. The deep, fundamental, inalienable need for
possession stretched itself, titanic and mighty, refreshed, reposed, and
strengthened by the involuntary rest it had had.

* * * * *

He fixed his eyes on Marise, waiting for the first interchange of a
look. He could see that her hands were trembling; and smiled to himself.
She was looking at the old man.

Now, in a moment she would look at him.

There were her eyes. She had looked at him. Thunder rolled in his ears.

CHAPTER XII

HEARD FROM THE STUDY

June 20.

From his desk in the inner room where he finally buckled down to those
estimates about the popple-wood casters, Neale could follow, more or
less closely, as his attention varied, the evening activities of the
household.

First there had been the clinking and laughter from the dining-room and
kitchen where Marise and the children cleared off the table and washed
the dishes. How sweet their voices sounded, all light and gay! Every
occasion for being with their mother was fun for the kids. How happy
Marise made them! And how they throve in that happiness like little
plants in the sunshine!

When you really looked at what went on about you, how funny and silly
lots of traditional ideas did seem. That notion, solemnly accepted by
the would-be sophisticated moderns, for instance, that a woman of beauty
and intelligence was being wasted unless she was engaged in being the
"emotional inspiration" of some man's life: which meant in plain
English, stimulating h