422CHAPTER XXIII
“If this is the way it was going to be, and I’d known it before, I’d have kept better watch over my affections,” said Aurora to herself, reflecting upon Gerald in Leghorn, where he was bending his will industriously, no doubt, to the work of forgetting her.
Beside the large sharp thorn of this thought, she was troubled by what was a small, merely uncomfortable thorn: the knowledge of Gerald exposed so closely to the influence of Vincent, that persuasive young man of God, who bowed to images and believed in the Pope. At the end of every wearisome day she gave thanks that for still another twenty-four hours she had by grace of strength from on high been able to fight off the temptation to write to Gerald.
This for nine days–the nine days it takes for a wonder to become a commonplace or a scandal to lose its prominent place in conversation. Then, in the way once sweetly habitual, there came a rapping at the door, the entrance of a servant, and the announcement, “C’è il signorino.”
Aurora for a second either did not really grasp the import of the words or did not trust her senses. She asked:
“What signorino? SignorinoWhat?”
“The signorino who has come back,” said the servant, unable on the instant to recall the foreign name. And if he had felt interest in the complexion of one so far removed from him as his mistress, he might have seen her turn the hue of a classic sunrise.
423On her way down the stairs Aurora rejected the idea of a tumultuous reproachful greeting, such as, “Where have you been so long, you mean thing?” Or of a cool and cutting one, such as, “You’re quite a stranger.” She decided to behave like a nice person, and show respect for her friend’s freedom, after having so explicitly left it to him.
The Italians performing the service of the house arranged it according to their own ideas of fitness, and on this warm afternoon the drawing-room was in soft-colored twilight, the Persian blinds being clasped, and their lower panels pushed out a very little so as to let in a modicum of the whiteness of day.