"'Well,' said Rebecca, 'you didn't have any more luck with your Mrs. James. You got a flea in your ear there, didn't you? You had a great idea _she_ was Rosa's mother.' "'If you'd listened to what I told you, you'd never have run away with the idea there was any money in the doctor for you. There was some sense in what I did, because it would have cut both ways. But you would interfere. You look surprised, Mister,' he said to me, chuckling. "Of course, I was surprised. I sat there open-mouthed. It is extraordinary how a man may become suddenly aware of unsuspected heights and depths in human life. It may be that I have always been less sophisticated than most. I am continually overlooking the shabbiness and rascality of the world, I find, in spite of the early apprenticeship which I served among business friends. I have often envied men this alertness of mind, this ever-present consciousness of the obliquity of human nature. And yet, I am not certain it is an enviable quality. I have a suspicion that those who have it envy us who lack it. They seem to have for us a half-contemptuous, half-respectful liking. So with Rebecca. She patted my arm and said to her husband: "'Let him alone. He's all right, is Rosa's sweetheart.' "At that moment Rosa came in dressed to go out with me. She had a white boa, I remember, and a white felt hat with a broad brim. She looked from one to the other and then back at me. 'What's the matter?' she said. "'Nothing; only saying we ought to think about getting settled soon,' I said, laughing, and we all laughed. And then, as we two passed into the narrow, twisted staircase to go down to the street, I heard Rebecca say quietly, 'Did you hear what he said, Oscar? Did you, eh?' "But, you know, I wanted to get clear of it all. I was more than ever set upon it. I understood better than ever Rosa's vague dislike of a life spent among the people she had known. It was nothing to me that Rebecca and her husband were potential blackmailers or that little Mr. Sachs, 'representing Babbolini's,' also represented a possible life-long neighbour if we lived at Sampierdarena. It was Rosa who felt the impossibility of it, and the subtle antagonisms of her environment. She knew, though she had no words for it, that there was a fuller life for us somewhere else. She would read an Italian translation of some English book, _Barnaby Rudge_ or _The Old Curiosity Shop_, and when I came back to her she would ask me about my country. I was often astonished to find how little I knew about it! What I did know was out of books. Humph!