"I am at your service, but first let me tell you that we are invited to take tea with the Italian lady at her hotel."
"No! I will not go! I need solitude. Have you accepted?"
"Certainly, for I do not enjoy being alone with my thoughts. And I believe, dear friend of forty-eight hours, that it will do you good to go also. We have not known each other long, but permit me to suggest that there are things that one had better bury in the bottom of the heart. Come, Coloni is very curious. If we do not go she is capable of coming after us. That would be worse still."
"It is true that we are recommended to cure old wounds by distraction. Come, then, we will forget ourselves in a foolish and gay society."
"You speak of old wounds. Then this lady"--
"Do not speak of her. Are there not other persons, other faces and names, which awaken old memories? You had better speak of man rather than of woman. This one is an unfortunate who slowly works out her destiny."
"Let us go, then!"
"Let us go! I will be gay in spite of"--
"Of what?"
"In spite of mournful remembrances."