eighteen. They were the first samples I ever encountered of the

great multitude of functionless property owners which encumbers

modern civilisation-but at the time I didn'tthink much of that

aspect of them…

I tell all this business as it happened without comment, because I

have no comment to make. It was all strange to me, strange rather

than wonderful, and, it may be, somedream of beauty died for ever

in those furtive meetings; it happened to me, and I could scarcely

have been more irresponsible in the matter or controlled events less

if I had been suddenly pushed over a cliff into water. I swam, of

course-findingmyself in it. Things tested me, and I reacted, as I

have told. The bloom of my innocence, if ever there had been such a

thing, was gone. And here is the remarkable thing about it; at the

time and for some days I was over-weeningly proud; I have never been

so proud before or since; Ifelt I had been promoted to virility; I

was unable to conceal my exultation from Willersley. It was a mood

of shining shameless ungracious self-approval. As he and I went

along in the cool morning sunshine by the rice fields in the throat

of the Val Maggia a silence fell between us.

"Youknow?" I said abruptly,-"about that woman?"

Willersley did not answer for a moment. He looked at me over the

corner of his spectacles.

"Things went pretty far?" he asked.

"Oh! all the way!" and I had a twinge of fatuous pride in my

unpremeditated achievement.

"She came to your room?"

I nodded.

"Iheard her. Iheard her whispering… The whispering and

rustling and so on. I was in my room yesterday… Any one

might haveheard you."

I went on with my head in the air.

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