Women amused him. He was seldom much moved by them, and he pursued them without haste or flurry, treading delicately like Agag of old. He had little intrigues everywhere, in Florence, in Naples, in Rome. Young married women, girls walking demurely with their mothers. He liked to know that it was he who brought the colour to their cheeks and that their eyes sought him among the crowd of men standing outside Aragno’s in the Corso or on the steps of the club in the Via Tornabuoni. Very often the affair would be one of the eyes only, but sometimes it went farther. Filippo’s procedure varied. Sometimes he put advertisements in the personal column of the Popolo Romano, and sometimes he wrote notes. It was always very interesting while it lasted. Occasionally affairs overlapped, as when an appeal to F. to meet Norina once more in the Borghese appeared in print above F.’s request that the signorina in the pink hat would write to him at the Poste Restante.
Olive had nearly yielded to him in Florence, and then she had run away, she had sought safety in flight. Evidently then his battle had been nearly won. But she had reassembled her forces, and he saw that it would be all to fight over again, and that the issue was doubtful.
As they came into the little square piazza of the Capitol she turned to him. “What have you to say? I—I am in a hurry.”
“I am sorry for that, but if you are going anywhere I can walk with you, or we can take a vettura and drive together.”
She looked past him at the green shining figure of Marcus Aurelius on his horse riding between her and the sun, and said nothing.
“I shall enjoy being with you even if you are inclined to be silent. You are so good to look at.”
His brazen stare gave point to his words. Her face was no longer childish in its charm. It had lost the first roundness of youth, but had gained in expression. A soul seemed to be shining through the veil of flesh—white and rose-red flesh, divinely gilt with freckles—and fluttering in the troubled depths of her blue eyes. The nun-like simplicity of her grey dress pleased him: it did not detract from her; it left the eyes free to return to her face, to dwell upon her lips.
“Something has happened,” he said. “There is another man. Are you married?”
“No.”
“I only came to Rome yesterday. Strange that we should meet so soon. It seems that there is a Destiny that shapes our ends after all.”