“All the story? No. Only the prologue. And the prologue’s a comedy, isn’t it? A children’s comedy! The rest isn’t quite like that. Pay the bill and let’s go. For a walk, if you like—and have time.”
“I ought just to call at my hotel—the Méditerranée—and see if there’s anything for me—any telegrams. If there aren’t, I should like to sit by the sea, and smoke, and hear the next chapter.”
At the moment Lucinda merely nodded. But as we walked away, she put her arm in mine and said, “The next chapter is called ‘Venice,’ and it’s rather a difficult one for me to tell.”
“I hope I’m not a person who has to have all the t’s crossed and all the i’s dotted. Arsenio has—or had—a ‘palazzo’ at Venice?”
“Yes. We stayed there.”
CHAPTER VI
VENICE
THE instructions for which I was waiting did not reach me for three days: I found reason to suspect, later on, that bribery had been at work; they had almost certainly been delayed, copied, and communicated to enemy quarters. The bulk of these enforcedly idle hours I spent with Lucinda—at the restaurant, on the sea-front, once or twice at my hotel, but never in the little house where she had a room: I often escorted her to the door, but she never asked me in. But we grew intimate; she told, I think, all, or almost all, the story, though often still with the air of examining herself, or of rendering an account to herself, rather than of being anxious to tell me: sometimes she would seem even to forget my presence. At other points, however, she would appeal directly to me, even urgently, as though she hung on my verdict. These changes gave variety and life to her story; one saw her living again through all her moods and experiences: on the other hand, it cannot be denied that they lengthened the narrative.