"Who knows but that I myself may come back with singed wings! Not for nothing has one the privilege of spending oneself upon others!"
"I hope it will be all right," said Lily—inadequately, she felt, as usual.
Aunt Clo also appeared to be conscious of the inadequacy, for she replied very gravely indeed:
"Ah! That is what it can never be. Addio!" She waved her hand above her head and strode away, clad in the blue jersey and the knickerbockers which she never discarded in the day-time, except when proceeding on a sight-seeing expedition to Rome.
Lily turned back into the house, and felt rather guilty because she was relieved by the prospect of spending a whole day in solitude, free from the slight tension of spirit that always assailed her in the lofty atmosphere wherein Aunt Clo seemed usually to exist. She felt still more guilty a little later on, when she went in search of a book.
Aunt Clo had recommended several volumes to her niece from the many, bearing the stamp of the London Library, that lay about the house.
"Pater," had said Aunt Clo. "Incredible that you have not yet made acquaintance with the beloved Pater! Or Fénelon. Do you know Fénelon? Then there is the little 'Cinque-cento' series—light, of course, but full of appeal. Or you may care for old friends, perhaps—I have Froissard, Ruskin, d'Annunzio—but not in a translation, I fear. Take your choice, bambina mia—I make you free of all my most precious companions."
Lily tried hard not to remember Aunt Clo's generous suggestions as she made her way to a small and remote bookcase that she had observed, on the first evening of her arrival at Genazzano, in a corner of the passage. The books were small and old-fashioned looking, and Lily had had no difficulty in discovering that almost all were children's books, that no doubt dated from Aunt Clo's incredible childhood. And Lily liked children's books, just as she liked toys, and sweets, and other babyish diversions, and she was just as profoundly ashamed of the one predilection as of the other.
She had read the volumes pressed upon her by Aunt Clo, and had liked one or two of them, whilst finding the majority strangely wearisome, but all the time there had lurked at the back of her mind a longing recollection of those children's books that were never taken from the shelf.
She knew that she would really enjoy them much more than even the novels conceded to her youthful tastes by Aunt Clo: "Jude the Obscure," "Daisy Miller," and "Sandra Belloni," none of which she had felt herself able to appreciate, or even to understand.