"I feel," continued the young girl, "as if it were almost a shame to have asked him to go to that silly dancing party with us. It seems as if we didn't appreciate him. I think we ought to have kept him for high aesthetic occasions and historical researches." "Oh, I don't think Mr. Colville was very deeply offended at being asked to go with us." "No," said Imogene, with another sigh, "he didn't seem so. I suppose there's always an undercurrent of sadness--of tragedy--in everything for him." "I don't suppose anything of the kind," cried Mrs. Bowen gaily. "He's had time enough to get over it." "Do people _ever_ get over such things?" "Yes--men." "It must be because he was young, as you say. But if it had happened _now_?" "Oh, it _couldn't_ happen now. He's altogether too cool and calculating." "Do you think he's cool and calculating?" "No. He's too old for a broken heart--a new one." "Mrs. Bowen," demanded the girl solemnly, "could _you_ forgive yourself for such a thing if you had done it?" "Yes, perfectly well, if I wasn't in love with him." "But if you'd made him _think_ you were?" pursued the girl breathlessly. "If I were a flirt--yes." "_I_ couldn't," said Imogene, with tragic depth. "Oh, be done with your intensities, and go to bed, Imogene," said Mrs. Bowen, giving her a playful push. VI It was so long since Colville had been at a dancing party that Mrs. Bowen's offer to take him to Madame Uccelli's had first struck his sense of the ludicrous. Then it had begun to flatter him; it implied that he was still young enough to dance if he would, though he had stipulated that they were not to expect anything of the kind from him. He liked also the notion of being seen and accepted in Florentine society as the old friend of Mrs. Bowen's, for he had not been long in discovering that her position in Florence was, among the foreign residents, rather authoritative. She was one of the very few Americans who were asked to Italian houses, and Italian houses lying even beyond the neutral ground of English-speaking intermarriages. She was not, of course, asked to the great Princess Strozzi ball, where the Florentine nobility appeared in the mediaeval pomp--the veritable costumes--of their ancestors; only a rich American banking family went, and their distinction was spoken of under the breath; but any glory short of this was within Mrs. Bowen's reach. So an old lady who possessed herself of Colville the night before had told him, celebrating Mrs. Bowen at length, and boasting of her acceptance among the best English residents, who, next after the natives, seem to constitute the social ambition of Americans living in Italian cities.