“No? Well this ought to content one, certainly. But to punish you for not fretting after the unattainable, I am going back.”
He followed silently, and they said very little as they went down the uneven street, past the Palazzo Corvaij, where slender columns support Gothic arches, and bands of black lava contrast with yellow stone, past the vast dark holes in which the people live and die and have shops and make merry, and so out of the little hillside town by the Messina gate. But just as they reached a great sumach-tree in a bend of the road, Teresa, who had been thinking, put an imprudent question—
“Do you really never want the unattainable?”
Wilbraham’s hands were clenched, his face turned away.
“Oh, my God!” he cried, under his breath, “do I not!”
Chapter Thirteen.
Mrs Brodrick was sitting under an awning on the broad terrace when Mrs Maxwell stepped out of the window. She was never very comfortable at having Mary Maxwell alone. It seemed to her that her shrewd eyes saw too many things. But she put down her book and welcomed her.
“They haven’t bestowed much of a shade upon you,” said Mrs Maxwell, glancing up.