easier for you? You ought to make your peace with
the world, you know. Supposing you could go and live where the world
happens to be beautiful, in Rome or Florence or Venice, wouldn't that
reconcile you to reality?"

"It might. But I don't see how I'm to go and live there. You see
there's the shop. There always is the shop."

"Would it be impossible to leave it for a little while?"

"Not impossible, perhaps; but"--he smiled, "well--highly imprudent."

"But if something else were open to you?"

"Nothing else is, at present. Most doors seem closed pretty tight
except the one marked Tradesmen's Entrance."

"You can't 'arrive' by that."

"Not, I admit, with any dignity. My idea was to walk up the
steps--there are a great many steps, I know--to the big front door and
keep on knocking at it till they let me in."

"I'm afraid the front door isn't always open very early in the day.
But there may be side doors."

"I don't know where to find them. And if I did, they would be bolted,
too."

"Not the one I am thinking of. Would you like to go abroad, to Italy?"

"There are a great many things I should like to do, and not the
remotest chance of doing them."

"Supposing that you got the chance, some way--even if it wasn't quite
the best way--would you take it?"

"The chance? I wish I saw one!"

"I think I told you I was going abroad to join my father. We shall be
in Italy for some time. When we are settled, in Rome, for the winter,
I shall want a secretary. I'm thinking of editing my grandfather's
unpublished writings, and I can't do this without a scholar's help. It
struck me that if you want to go abroad, and nothing better turns up,
you might care to take this work for a year. For the sake of seeing
Italy."

Seeing Italy? Italy that he had once desired with all his heart to
see. And now it was nothing to him that he would see Italy; the point
was that he would see her. Talk of open doors! It was dawning on him
that the door of heaven was being opened to him. He could say nothing.
He leaned forward staring at his own loosely clasped hands.

She mistook his silence for hesitation, and it was her turn to become
diffident and shy. "The salary would not be very large, I'm afraid--"

The salary? He smiled. She had opened the door of heaven for him and
she actually proposed to pay him for walking in!

"But there would be no expenses, and you would have space and time. I
should not want your help for more than three