I remained there with Mrs. Ambient, though our conversation had more pauses than speeches. The boy’s little fixed white face seemed, as before, to plead with me to stay, and after a while it produced still another effect, a very curious one, which I shall find it difficult to express. Of course I expose myself to the charge of attempting to give fantastic reasons for an act which may have been simply the fruit of a native want of discretion; and indeed the traceable consequences of that perversity were too lamentable to leave me any desire to trifle with the question. All I can say is that I acted in perfect good faith, and that Dolcino’s friendly little gaze gradually kindled the spark of my inspiration. What helped it to glow were the other influences,--the silent, suggestive garden-nook, the perfect opportunity (if it was not an opportunity for that, it was an opportunity for nothing), and the plea that I speak of, which issued from the child’s eyes, and seemed to make him say, “The mother that bore me and that presses me here to her bosom--sympathetic little organism that I am--has really the kind of sensibility which she has been represented to you as lacking; if you only look for it patiently and respectfully. How is it possible that she should n’t have it? How is it possible that I should have so much of it (for I am quite full of it, dear, strange gentleman), if it were not also in some degree in her? I am my father’s child, but I am also my mother’s, and I am sorry for the difference between them!” So it shaped itself before me, the vision of reconciling Mrs. Ambient with her husband, of putting an end to their great disagreement The project was absurd, of course, for had I not had his word for it--spoken with all the bitterness of experience--that the gulf that divided them was wellnigh bottomless? Nevertheless, a quarter of an hour after Mark had left us, I said to his wife that I could n’t get over what she told me the night before about her thinking her husband’s writings “objectionable.” I had been so very sorry to hear it, had thought of it constantly, and wondered whether it were not possible to make her change her mind. Mrs. Ambient gave me rather a cold stare; she seemed to be recommending me to mind my own business. I wish I had taken this mute counsel, but I did not. I went on to remark that it seemed an immense pity so much that was beautiful should be lost upon her. “Nothing is lost upon me,” said Mrs. Ambient “I know they are very beautiful.” “Don’t you like papa’s books?” Dolcino asked, addressing his mother, but still looking at me. Then he added to me, “Won’t you read them to me, American gentleman?”