ind. Besides, if he
should come back, my explanation will serve as well then as now. But I
wish I knew what it was that his face recalled to me."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THE PRIZE IS NEARLY GRASPED.

Tito walked along with a light step, for the immediate fear had
vanished; the usual joyousness of his disposition reassumed its
predominance, and he was going to see Romola. Yet Romola's life seemed
an image of that loving, pitying devotedness, that patient endurance of
irksome tasks, from which he had shrunk and excused himself. But he was
not out of love with goodness, or prepared to plunge into vice: he was
in his fresh youth, with soft pulses for all charm and loveliness; he
had still a healthy appetite for ordinary human joys, and the poison
could only work by degrees. He had sold himself to evil, but at present
life seemed so nearly the same to him that he was not conscious of the
bond. He meant all things to go on as they had done before, both within
and without him: he meant to win golden opinions by meritorious
exertion, by ingenious learning, by amiable compliance: he was not going
to do anything that would throw him out of harmony with the beings he
cared for. And he cared supremely for Romola; he wished to have her for
his beautiful and loving wife. There might be a wealthier alliance
within the ultimate reach of successful accomplishments like his, but
there was no woman in all Florence like Romola. When she was near him,
and looked at him with her sincere hazel eyes, he was subdued by a
delicious influence as strong and inevitable as those musical vibrations
which take possession of us with a rhythmic empire that no sooner ceases
than we desire it to begin again.

As he trod the stone stairs, when he was still outside the door, with no
one but Maso near him, the influence seemed to have begun its work by
the mere nearness of anticipation.

"Welcome, Tito mio," said the old man's voice, before Tito had spoken.
There was a new vigour in the voice, a new cheerfulness in the blind
face, since that first interview more than two months ago. "You have
brought fresh manuscript, doubtless; but since we were talking last
night I have had new ideas: we must take a wider scope--we must go back
upon our footsteps."

Tito, paying his homage to Romola as he advanced, went, as his custom
was, straight to Bardo's chair, and put his hand in the palm that was
held to receive it, placing himself on the cross-legged