"Oh, are they?" she retorted. "Then why doesn't the loaf in the baker's window feed the beggar that looks in at it?"
"Casuist!" he cried and drew her up the bend of the road.
Odo stood gazing after them. Their words, their aspect, seemed an echo of his reading. The father in his plain broadcloth and square-buckled shoes, the daughter with her unpowdered hair and spreading hat, might have stepped from the pages of the romance. What a breath of freshness they brought with them! The girl's cheek was clear as the cherry-blossoms, and with what lovely freedom did she move! Thus Julie might have led Saint Preux through her "Elysium." Odo crossed the road and, breaking one of the blossoming twigs, thrust it in the breast of his uniform. Then he walked down the hill to the inn where the horses waited. Half an hour later he rode up to the house where he lodged in the Piazza San Carlo.
In the archway Cantapresto, heavy with a nine years' accretion of fat, laid an admonishing hand on his bridle.
"Cavaliere, the Countess's black boy—"
"Well?"
"Three several times has battered the door down with a missive."
"Well?"
"The last time, I shook him off with the message that you would be there before him."
"Be where?"