As she spoke he noticed with a pang how much she was altered, and with a sudden movement stooped down and kissed her. "I would do anything in the world that could please you," he said. She held him fast with her feeble hands. "My dear, she is worth much more than _that_," she said eagerly. "But I don't think you yet know how much, and I am sometimes afraid she will never let you know." "What do you mean?" he said, startled. But he could not get her to explain. She had put into words what he had avoided forming into a definite idea. In his heart he knew that he ought to have spoken to Phillis about their wedding day, but it was so much more to his inclination that matters should go on as they had been going, that he had refused to think about the future. He had been out once or twice to the villa, and though Oliver was on guard, and though Bice showed the same reserve, it interested him to break through it, as he had once or twice succeeded in doing, and he was beginning to take a dangerous pleasure in thwarting Oliver. However, he had spoken quite truly when he told his aunt that he would do anything in the world to give her pleasure, and he had no intention of avoiding the conversation with Phillis, only looking forward to it somewhat ruefully, as leading matters to a point which he would have preferred to regard for some while yet in the distance. She was quite ready to go to the Uffizi when he suggested it, but asked to go round by the Duomo and Giotto's tower. The day was not very bright, but there was a still grave beauty about it. They went under the frowning walls of the Strozzi into the old market with its narrow, dirty, picturesque, unchanged alleys. Even when great bundles of yellow and scarlet tulips, fresh from the fields, and splendid in the glory of their colours, lie tossed upon the ground, or when myriads of lilies of the valley are gathered into fragrant sheaves, this old market of Florence is not a place in which you can linger without some offence to eye or ear. And yet joy, too, were it only for these things, or for the sweet Madonna with her lilies which Luca della Robbia set up with faithful reverence for the buyers and sellers below. But in autumn days flowers do not deck Florence with the bounty of spring or summer. Vegetables there are in plenty--cucumbers, and scarlet tomatoes, and crisp white lettuces; and as for the fruits, they are heaped in great piles; melons--striped, smooth, small, large--lie under cool green leaves; rosy peaches, figs, purple and green, wild strawberries, grapes of every shade of delicious colour, brighten the old stones; but a certain grace has fled with the flowers, and Florence is not quite herself.