After she parted from Valdobia, puzzled and wistful, she recalled one week during which she had been completely happy. Ida was visiting friends uncongenial to herself, and she had gone alone to Bruges. In that ancient city of almost perfect beauty, she had given the wildness in her nature uninterrupted liberty. She had written letters that no woman yet has sent to a man without regretting it, for in this stage of man’s progress, at least, he wants little of the soul of woman. It is possible that the women who live in their imaginations are the most fortunate, after all, for they arbitrarily make man the perfect mate he possibly may be some centuries hence. At all events Ora imagined Gregory Compton with her unremittingly, deliberately ignoring the depression that must descend upon her when once more companioned by his wife. It had seemed to her that her step had never been so buoyant, her body so light. People had paused to stare at the beautiful young American with her head in the air looking as if she were about to sing. It had been a wonderful, an almost incredible experience, and she never had been able quite to recapture it even when alone in the night. But she had wondered sometimes if life held any happiness as real as that had been, and she wondered again as she switched off her light and flung herself into the bed that had witnessed so much despair before Valdobia had appeared and put a quietus on her imagination. She wondered also if the passion of the soul were so much greater than the common experience of man and woman that its indulgence must forever make life itself unreal. She felt that this question threw some light on her problem, then dismissed the subject peremptorily. She might regret that extraordinary love affair, with its terrors and its delights, but she would bury it once for all; and she fell asleep with the wise remark: “What fools we are! Oh, lord, what fools!” XXXVI After this she discarded what was left of her crust, and emerged like a butterfly. The present was delightful, she would enjoy it without analysis or retrospect. She met several clever and interesting men, but had eyes for no one but Valdobia. They explored Genoa until they knew it almost as well as the natives, spending hours down in the long twisted streets, so narrow that no vehicle had ever visited them, and swarming like the inside of an anthill. Harrowing adventures were impossible, for the Genoese masses if discourteous are neither a lawless nor an impertinent race. Ora and Ida might have roamed alone, and been unmolested save by the enterprising shopkeepers that dealt in filigree. They rode over the steep hills in the trams, and took long motor drives in the brilliant winter sunshine to the picturesque towns and villages down the Riviera. Then, on a Saturday morning, they bade good-bye to the ancient city and took the train for Monte Carlo.