towards me.

"What do you mean?" she answered with a faint smile on her lips, and

awkward and yielding.

I shut the door behind her, still holding her with one hand, then

turned upon her-she was laughing nervously-and without a word drew

her to me and kissed her. And I remember that as I kissed her she

made a little noise almost like the purring miaow with which a cat

will greet one and her face, close to mine, became solemn and

tender.

She was suddenly a different being from the discontented wife who

had tapped a moment since on my door, a woman transfigured…

That evening I came down to dinner a monster of pride, for behold! I

was a man. I feltmyself the most wonderful and unprecedented of

adventurers. It was hard to believe that any one in the world

before had done as much. My mistress and I met smiling, we carried

things off admirably, and it seemed to me that Willersley was the

dullest old dog in the world. I wanted to give him advice. I

wanted to give him derisive pokes. After dinner and coffee in the

lounge I was too excited and hilarious to go to bed, I made him come

with me down to the cafe under the arches by the pier, and there

drank beer and talked extravagant nonsense about everything under

the sun, in order not to talk about the happenings of the afternoon.

All the time something shouted within me: "Iam a man! Iam a

man!"…

"What shall we do to-morrow?" said he.

"I'm for loafing," I said. "Let's row in the morning and spend to-

morrow afternoon just as we did to-day."

"They say the church behind the town is worth seeing."

"We'll go up about sunset; that's the best time for it. We can

start about five."

We heard music, and went further along the arcade to discover a

place where girls in operatic Swiss peasant costume were singing and

dancing on a creaking, protesting little stage. I eyed their

generous display of pink neck and arm with the seasoned eye of a man

who has lived in the world. Life was perfectly simple and easy, I

felt, if one took it the right way.

Next day Willersley wanted to go on, but I delayed. Altogether I

kept him back four days. Then abruptly my mood changed, and we

decided to start early the following morning. I remember, though a

little indistinctly, the feeling of my last talk with that woman

whose surname, odd as it may seem, either I never learnt or I have

forgotten. (Her christian name was Milly.) She was tired and

rather low-spirited, and disposed to be sentimental, and for the

first time in our intercourse I found myself liking her for the sake

of her own personality. There was something kindly and generous

appearing behind the veil of naive and uncontrolled sensuality she

had worn. There was a curious quality of motherliness in her

attitude to me that something in my nature answered and approved.

She didn't pretend to keep it up that she had yielded to my

initiative. "I've done you no harm," she said a little doubtfully,

an odd note for a man's victim! And, "we've had a good time. You

have liked me, haven't you?"

She interested me in her lonely dissatisfied life; she was childless

and had no hope of children, and her husband was the only son of a

rich meat salesman, very mean, a mighty smoker-"he reeks of it,"

she said, "always"-and interested in nothing but golf, billiards

(which he played very badly), pigeon shooting, convivial Free

Masonry and Stock Exchange punting. Mostly they drifted about the

Riviera. Her mother had contrived her marriage when she was

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't think 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, some dream 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-finding myself 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; I felt 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.

"You know?" 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.

"I heard her. I heard her whispering… The whispering and

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

might have heard you."