“Will you remember,” she said, “what happens when one amuses oneself with persons who have blood in their veins? Will you? There, go! I do not believe you will forget.”
She released him with a push. With ceremonious deliberation he took out his pocket-handkerchief, to wipe a goutlet of blood from the edge of his hair.
“These are scarcely parliamentary methods!” he said, and managed a laugh. “But a man—” an enormous increase in his sense of masculine importance appeared in his bearing—“a man, you know, cannot resent such fairy touches from the hand of a lady. He is bound to consider such attentions a compliment. I have been flattered beyond my deserts. But I cannot be mistaken in thinking that I have brought love and caresses this morning to the wrong market, and so, with your permission, I will withdraw. Until another day, Camilla, when you feel more kindly disposed. No, my Camilla, I shall not forget you. I think I can promise in all sincerity not to forget.”
He got to the door a little hurriedly, but with the hope that he had not come off so very badly after all.
Once out of the house, the little future man of the world took a deep lungful of the free air. The thumb he presently slipped through his armhole, while with the other hand he swung his cane, expressed as far as it could the enrichment he felt in the knowledge of women gained that morning. Hero of a scene of jealousy! But who would have dreamed that a well-brought-up girl...? He delicately touched his temple to see whether it still bled.
Drawn by Emil Pollak-Ottendorff
“EVERY TIME BIANCA WAS WAKENED ... SHE SAW CAMILLA WRITING”
Camilla had thrown herself into one of the shrouded arm-chairs. The scene had not been what she intended. One thing after the other—finally that ferocious need to get her fingers among his hair—had interfered. But she regretted nothing, though not unaware of having, to produce her grand effect, torn off a part of herself and thrown it to the crows. She would bleed, and she would miss it; still, for the moment she regretted nothing.
SHE never saw Giulio again, to speak to him. As she did not even pass him on the street for a year or two (and pretend not to know him!) she supposed him in Zurich. Often, in the night, for ever so long after their parting, her heart would be caught as if in a screw by the remembrance of the past. Shame would burn her for her lapses from a becoming rigor. There had been a kiss or two, after all. Unpractical longing for everything to have been different, or else for everything by some wonderful twist of fortune still to turn out well, and she and Giulio be together again, would wring tears from her. But in her saner moments she understood that there was no hope of that, and simply cried into her pillow because she could not get Giulio out of her blood.