“Oh—?” she wondered. “Would you like to see Rome restored to the Pope?”
“Yes,” said he, “decidedly—for aesthetic reasons, if for no others.”
“I suppose there are aesthetic reasons,” she assented. “But we, of course, think there are conclusive reasons in mere justice.”
“I don't doubt there are conclusive reasons in mere justice, too,” said he.
After dinner, at the Cardinal's invitation, the Duchessa went to the piano, and played Bach and Scarlatti. Her face, in the soft candlelight, as she discoursed that “luminous, lucid” music, Peter thought... But what do lovers always think of their ladies' faces, when they look up from their pianos, in soft candlelight?
Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, taking her departure, said to the Cardinal, “I owe your Eminence the two proudest days of my life. The first was when I read in the paper that you had received the hat, and I was able to boast to all my acquaintances that I had been in the convent with your niece by marriage. And the second is now, when I can boast forevermore hereafter that I've enjoyed the honour of making my courtesy to you.”
“So,” said Peter, as he walked home through the dew and the starlight of the park, amid the phantom perfumes of the night, “so the Cardinal does n't approve of mixed marriages and, of course, his niece does n't, either. But what can it matter to me? For alas and alas—as he truly said—it's hardly a question of actuality.”
And he lit a cigarette.