"You don't want me to be ridiculous, Dolly?" he repeated, not knowing what to say.
What should she answer to that? No, she did not want him to be ridiculous; and as he spoke she recalled the staggering, impotent figure of last night, in its unmanly feebleness and senseless idiocy. A sense of the difficulty of her task and the vanity of her representations came over Dolly; it gave her new food for tears, but the present effect was to make her stop them. I suppose despair does not weep. Dolly was not despairing, either.
"What shall we do, father?" she asked, ignoring all his remarks and suggestions.
"Do, Dolly? About what?"
"Don't you think we will not stay any longer in Venice?"
"For all I care! Where, then?"
"To Rome, father?"
"I thought you were to be in Rome at Christmas?"
"It is not so very long till Christmas."
"Is your mother agreed?"