d it. The pleasure he felt in saying to Cecilia things of even
less than average conversational merit was proof enough that it was not
only what he said that interested him. When a man of ordinary assurance
wishes to shine in the eyes of a woman, he generally succeeds at least
in shining in his own.

Guido was not any more self-conscious than most people, and he was
certainly not more diffident of his own gifts, which he could judge
impartially because he attached little importance to what they might
bring him. But the categorical command to say nothing dull made it quite
impossible to say anything witty, and the conversation languished a
little and then broke off.

It was past ten o'clock when Guido again found a chance of speaking to
Cecilia. He had looked at her more often than he knew, after dinner, and
had given rather vague answers to one or two people who had spoken to
him. He had moved about the great room idly, looking at the familiar old
portraits, and at objects he had known in the same places for years. He
had smoked a cigarette, standing with his host, while the latter talked
to him about the Etruscan tomb he had just discovered on his place, and
he had nodded pleasantly to the sound of the old gentleman's voice
without hearing a word. Then he had smoked another cigarette at the
opposite end of the room with a group of younger men, who talked of
nothing but motor cars; and when they asked his opinion about something,
he had said that he had none, and preferred walking, which speech caused
such a perceptible chill that he turned away and left the young men to
their discussion.

All the while his eyes followed Cecilia's movements, and lingered upon
her when she stood still or sat down. In the course of the evening each
of the young men who talked about motor cars managed to try his luck at
a conversation with her, and all, by way of being original, talked to
her about the same thing. As she had just come from Paris, and was rich,
it was to be supposed that she, of course, owned a motor car, had passed
her examination as an engineer, and spent most of her time in a mask and
broad-visored cap scouring Europe at the rate of fifty miles an hour.

"But why do you not get an automobile?" asked each of the young men, as
soon as her answer had disappointed him.

"Do you play the violin?" she enquired sweetly of each.

"No," each answered.

"Then why do you not get a violin?"

In this way she confounded the y