"Not at all," Dennison answered. "I shall come back by-and-by, when I feel like it. In the meanwhile I pay my taxes regularly over there, and I subscribe to all the charities I believe in—three or four. If there were to be another war (but there won't be) I should return at once."
"Well, I don't call it a useful life."
"Is it more useful to make money—at somebody else's expense?"
"It's more useful to be a good citizen; to bring up one's family well; to—"
"Let's stop there," Dennison interposed. "People with families never approve of the people who haven't those blessings. It doesn't occur to them that nobody forced them to marry; they selected the lot, and therefore they accepted responsibilities. But a man who has not undertaken family life ought not to be saddled with its cares. You chose your boys and girls; I chose Italy. Each to his taste. You may ask, 'Isn't the world to be peopled, then?' No trouble about that; it always will be. Personally my own answer to the same question might be, however, the old one, 'Je n'en vois pas la nécessité.'"
"That's where you all end; dreary nihilism!"
A figure was now passing the piazza, following the road which ascends from the valley. "Let us see if Hannibal gives tongue from the house," said Dennison. "It's a man they call the Professor; he lives behind the church, and he and the dog detest each other. Generally, Hannibal knows his step even from the depths of the olive-grove! You don't want to watch those fires all night, do you?"
They returned to the house. The outer door of Casa Colombina bore no relation to the drawing-room, dining-room, or library. It led to the court, to the cellar, to the gardens, to the podere, to the kitchen, to whatever you please; but it was only by a circuitous route through corridors and purposeless anterooms that Dennison could reach his own apartments. As he and his guest were following this route they caught another glimpse across the court of Modesta in her kitchen. The door was more widely open this time, and they could see the whole interior of the large, vaulted, hall-like room, with the rows of copper pans on the wall. The kittens were now in their basket on the floor, and Modesta's lap was occupied by the dachshund, who had curled himself into a ball. The waitress was still knitting, her head bent forward over her work. With her smoothly braided hair and her white apron, in her neat, quiet room, with her cats and her dog and her flower-decked shrine, she was the image of peace.
"Tranquillity is most surely a blessed thing," quoted Gray. "If it were not for the moving needles, I should say she was asleep."
"She probably is asleep; she is knitting unconsciously. She appears to require about fifteen hours of slumber out of the twenty-four," said Dennison, as he lighted wax matches, one after the other, to show the way. When he reached the sitting-room he rang for lights, and presently Modesta appeared, carrying the lamp, her eyes drowsy.