Marise stumbled down the stairs, a little dizzied by the sudden removal of that pressing, urgent, magnetic personality. To step out suddenly from under it, was like stepping into a vacuum. Her ears rang. At the street-door she paused, waiting for the mist to clear from before her eyes. She peered out into the quiet street, as if she were looking into life itself, the life that Madame de la Cueva had so magisterially set before her. And she loathed in anticipation everything that was waiting for her there. There lay the world, grown-up life, Rome, her career, before her, and apparently there was nothing in it which she would not detest. Love ... the love that Madame de la Cueva had shown her how to get ... she shrank away from it with a proud, cold scorn, her nostrils quivering. Music ... there was no music in that program, only an exploitation of music to buy personal success for her. And she loved music ... fiercely she clung to that, as the one thing that would not betray her, the one thing she dared love with all her heart. She stood on the threshold of the street-door, dreading to take even one step forward into it all, till the concierge looked at her hard, with a disagreeable smile, suspecting a rendezvous with a lover. Marise saw the look, knew what it meant, felt it push her forward, knew in anticipation how that sort of look and what lay back of it would be always pushing her forward into what she hated. With a long breath she stepped into the street, into the road that stretched before her. She held her head high, with an angry pride. The concierge-soul of the world must never know what was inside her life. The thing to do, the only thing she saw that was tolerable to do, was to take care that she was not being fooled. Well, she thought with a grave, still bitterness, she certainly ought to know something about that. _THE END OF ALL ROADS_ CHAPTER XLI 1909 Neale sat idly in front of the black-and-white facade of the Orvieto Cathedral, trying idly to make up his mind on a matter of no importance whatever and not getting on very fast. In his pocket was his ticket back to New York and his ship sailed in a week. But, of course, it did not sail from Orvieto. Should he go south to Naples where most of the passengers took ship? If he did, he could stop over four or five days in Rome. It might be interesting to revisit Rome. Or should he go north to Genoa, where the ship was due to stop the day after leaving Naples? He had not seen Genoa at all and he might be missing something worth while. It ought to stir any American's imagination to hang about the docks where a certain visionary, middle-aged sailor-man had gone up and down trying to raise the funds for a mad attempt to prove the world absolutely different from what everybody else had thought.