Guido saw how they left her, with a discomfited expression, and as if they had suddenly acquired the conviction that their clothes did not fit them, for that is generally the first sensation experienced by a very well-dressed young man when he has been made to feel that he is foolish. Guido saw, and understood, and he was worldly wise enough to know that unless Cecilia would show a little more willingness to seem pleased, she would presently be sitting alone on a sofa, waiting for her mother to go home. As soon as this inevitable result followed, he sat down beside her. She turned her face slowly, when he had settled himself, and she looked at him with slightly bent head, a little upwards, from under her lids. The light that fell from a shaded lamp above her marked the sharp curve of arching brows sharply against the warm shadow over the deep-set and widely opened eyes.
For a few seconds Guido returned the steady gaze, before he spoke.
"Are you the Sphinx?" he asked suddenly. "Have you come to life again to ask men your riddle?"
"I ask it of myself," she answered softly, and then looked away. "I cannot answer it."
"Are you good or evil?" Guido asked, speaking again.
The questions came to his lips as if some one else were asking them with his voice.
"Good—I think," answered the young girl, motionless beside him. "But I might be very bad."
"What is the riddle?" Guido enquired, and now he felt that he was speaking out of his own curiosity, and not as the mouthpiece of some one in a dream. "Do you ask yourself what it all means? I suppose so. We all ask that, and we never get any answer."
"It is too vague a question. It cannot have a definite answer. No. I ask three questions which I found in a German book of philosophy when I was a little girl. I tried hard to understand what all the rest of the book was about, but I found on one page three questions, printed by themselves. I can see the page now, and the questions were numbered one, two, and three. I have asked them ever since."
"What were they?"