"You must take that," she said breathlessly. "Pay it back some other time and go--go to Venice to-morrow."
John looked full in her eyes.
"And you called yourself the fly in the amber," he said. Then he tightened her fingers round the coin--kissed them and walked to the door.
"I'll go to Venice," he said--"I'll go--somehow or other. I'll be the man who can bear things without becoming like that. You shan't be disappointed."
He came back again and seized her hand. Then he hurried out.
She listened to the door slamming. She heard his footsteps in the quiet street, then she dropped down on the mattress on the drawing-room floor.
"Oh, you fool!" she whispered under her breath. "Oh, you fool!"
But wisdom and folly, they are matters of environment. Behind it all, there was the most wonderful satisfaction in the world in saying--"Oh, you fool!"
BOOK III
THE CITY