"At the Valentino; but that was an hour ago!"
Odo slipped from the saddle.
"I must dress first. Call a chair; or no—write a letter for me first. Let Antonio carry it."
The ex-soprano, wheezing under the double burden of flesh and consequence, had painfully laboured after Odo up the high stone flights to that young gentleman's modest lodgings, and they stood together in a study lined with books and hung with prints and casts from the antique. Odo threw off his dusty coat and called the servant to remove his boots.
"Will you read the lady's letters, cavaliere?" Cantapresto asked, obsequiously offering them on a lacquered tray.
"No—no: write first. Begin 'My angelic lady'—"
"You began the last letter in those terms, cavaliere," his scribe reminded him with suspended pen.
"The devil! Well, then—wait. 'Throned goddess'—"
"You ended the last letter with 'throned goddess.'"
"Curse the last letter! Why did you send it?" Odo sprang up and slipped his arms into the dress-tunic his servant had brought him. "Write anything. Say that I am suddenly summoned by—"