“You don’t have to look far in Genoa,” said Ida, giving him a cordial smile and handshake to cover Ora’s chilling welcome. “If the whole town turns out for what it calls exercise, each quarter seems to keep to itself. We see the same faces every day.” Valdobia fell into step beside Ida, who at once began to chatter questions about their common acquaintance in Rome. She grinned mentally as she rattled off titles, recalling the wiry little figure of her mother at the wash-tub, and her father with his “muck”-spattered overalls and blue dinner pail; but Valdobia, too accustomed to titles to note whether Americans were lavish in their use or not, replied naturally and refrained from glancing at the woman who had given his self-centred ego the profoundest shock it had ever received. He was now thirty-eight. In his early manhood he had loved with the facility and brevity of his race. Then for six years, after his return to Rome, he had been the lover of a brilliant and subtle woman ten years older than himself, who, for a short time, inspired in him the belief that at last he had entered the equatorial region of the _grande passion_. This passed off, and she became a habit, which lasted until, with the decline of her beauty, she lost much of her finesse, as well as her control over both temper and complexion. It had taken him a year or more to regain his liberty, and when he did, after scenes that he fain would dismiss from his memory, he determined to keep it. His long experience with a woman of many characteristics and one or two noble qualities, before she gossipped and inflamed them to death, had thoroughly disillusioned him, and since his release his gallantries had been lighter than in his youth. When he first met Ora Blake he was attracted merely by her cold fairness, redeemed from classic severity by her brilliant seeing eyes, which so often sparkled with humour, and amused at her naïve and girlish attitude of happiness in temporary freedom; so successfully practised by herself and Ida. He had supposed her to be little more than twenty, and had wondered if her husband were even busier than the average American, to let her run away so soon. When she told him she was twenty-seven, and had been married seven years, he found himself speculating on the temperament of a woman whom time and life had left untouched. Shortly after, he received a biographical sketch of her from Mrs. O’Neil, also of Butte, who was wintering in Rome and entertaining such of the aristocracy as she met at her Embassy. It was some time since his thoughts had dwelt upon any woman when alone, and when he found himself sitting by his window in the evening dreaming over his cigar instead of amusing himself in the varied life of Rome after his habit, he was at first amused, then angry, finally apprehensive. He had no desire for another period of torment, followed by the successive stages that finished in impatience and satiety.