I did not make any light; I did not wish it, for the precious darkness of the Cathedral remained with me—magic darkness in which I beheld floating clouds made of the dust of gold and vanishing melodies. Any person who knows of these singular things comprehends how little of them can be told; but to those people who do not know of them, it may appear all great foolishness. Such people are either too young, and they must wait, or too old—they have forgotten!
It was an hour afterward, and Poor Jr. had knocked twice at my door, when I lighted the room and opened it to him. He came in, excitedly flushed, and, instead of taking a chair, began to walk quickly up and down the floor.
“I’m afraid I forgot all about you, Ansolini,” he said, “but that girl I ran into is a—a Miss Landry, whom I have known a long—”
I put my hand on his shoulder for a moment and said:
“I think I am not so dull, my friend!”
He made a blue flash at me with his eyes, then smiled and shook his head.
“Yes, you are right,” he answered, re-beginning his fast pace over the carpet. “It was she that I meant in Lucerne—I don’t see why I should not tell you. In Paris she said she didn’t want me to see her again until I could be—friendly—the old way instead of something considerably different, which I’d grown to be. Well, I’ve just told her not only that I’d behave like a friend, but that I’d changed and felt like one. Pretty much of a lie that was!” He laighed, without any amusement. “But it was successful, and I suppose I can keep it up. At any rate we’re going over to Venice with her and her mother to-morrow. Afterwards, we’ll see them in Naples just before they sail.”
“To Venice with them!” I could not repress crying out.
“Yes; we join parties for two days,” he said, and stopped at a window and looked out attentively at nothing before he went on: “It won’t be very long, and I don’t suppose it will ever happen again. The other man is to meet them in Rome. He’s a countryman of yours, and I believe—I believe it’s—about—settled!”
He pronounced these last words in an even voice, but how slowly! Not more slowly than the construction of my own response, which I heard myself making: