“As great as a princess in other places. You didn’t know? Well, I don’t suppose it will make much difference to you, but that’s the truth. She is what we call a great Squire in England. You know what that means?” “Yes; I know what that means.” Pandolfini looked at him with a half-smile, yet sigh. What difference could it make to him? He had never thought of putting himself on a level with that beautiful princess, of securing her to be his--his housewife, his chief possession. All that he had thought of was the pleasure of being with her, looking at her, like poor Snodgrass. Now here was something which put a still greater difference between them, and removed her out of his sphere. Was it not an irony of fate that before one woman only the doors of his heart should have flown wide open? and that she should be so entirely out of his sphere? A slight vague smile came upon his face, half at himself and his evil fortune--half with a tremulous and painful pleasure that she should be so rich, so magnificent, so secure of everything that was good. Whatever happened, that was always well: that she should be a kind of queen, regnant, and safe from all straits and contradictions of fortune in the outer world as well as in the hearts that loved her. But he sighed. Why was it that the world was so made that the beautiful was always beyond reach, that love must be never more than a dream? He murmured over a verse or two of Leopardi, as he went upon his way, with that smile and sigh. “O natura, o natura, Perchè non rendi poi, Quel che prometti allor? perchè de tanto, Inganni i figli tuoi.” Nothing more pathetic or more poignant than that sense of tantalised anguish and pleasure--supremest good held before the eyes, but ever inaccessible, giving happiness and suffering together, without blame of any one, or wrong, can be. And Pandolfini was not the kind of man who rails at fortune. He went away melancholy along Arno: yet smiled while he sighed.