She stood on the threshold of the street-door, dreading to take even one step forward into it all, till the concierge looked at her hard, with a disagreeable smile, suspecting a rendezvous with a lover. Marise saw the look, knew what it meant, felt it push her forward, knew in anticipation how that sort of look and what lay back of it would be always pushing her forward into what she hated.
With a long breath she stepped into the street, into the road that stretched before her. She held her head high, with an angry pride. The concierge-soul of the world must never know what was inside her life. The thing to do, the only thing she saw that was tolerable to do, was to take care that she was not being fooled. Well, she thought with a grave, still bitterness, she certainly ought to know something about that.
THE END OF ALL ROADS
CHAPTER XLI
1909
Neale sat idly in front of the black-and-white façade of the Orvieto Cathedral, trying idly to make up his mind on a matter of no importance whatever and not getting on very fast. In his pocket was his ticket back to New York and his ship sailed in a week. But, of course, it did not sail from Orvieto. Should he go south to Naples where most of the passengers took ship? If he did, he could stop over four or five days in Rome. It might be interesting to revisit Rome. Or should he go north to Genoa, where the ship was due to stop the day after leaving Naples? He had not seen Genoa at all and he might be missing something worth while. It ought to stir any American's imagination to hang about the docks where a certain visionary, middle-aged sailor-man had gone up and down trying to raise the funds for a mad attempt to prove the world absolutely different from what everybody else had thought.