This was the end. He would not try to see Anne any more. He refused to draw her down into the slough of his misery again. He would finish up his affairs, settle a certain sum upon his mother and Claire, as much as he could afford, leaving only a meager allowance for his own future. Then he would go abroad and drag out the bathos of his days in some obscure corner of the old world, where his face and name had not penetrated. And perhaps the end would not be long in coming. For he had always felt that his would not be a long life. For the candle to blow out before it had spluttered to its ignominious finish, seemed suddenly both beautiful and fitting. The thought soothed his whirling senses like a promise of peace; a colossal lullaby from the infinite. Enfolded within its majestic irony, he drifted into a reverie in which all sense of time and space was lost. Chin sunk into the clammy collar of his overcoat, he gazed before him into the dripping branches of the trees. Gazed so long and remained so motionless that he did not notice when the rain ceased to fall. Nor observed that it had gradually solidified into a jelly-like fog which coiled about the trees in sickly wreaths. He did not even look up when a hulking shadow moved between him and the enswathed world. It was not until a mechanical "move along, move along, man, the park ain't no dormitory," penetrated his dull senses, that he became aware of his chilled and paralyzed body. Looking stupidly up into the dim round face of the policeman, he broke into a short, hysterical laugh, rose unsteadily to his feet and laughing and coughing, wended his way down the wind-swept path in the wake of the scattering leaves. CHAPTER X MERRY-GO-ROUND "Confess it, Anne. You are bored unspeakably, is it not so?" exclaimed the Marchese, as he poured a few drops of Bacardi into a cup of tea, before handing it to Anne. "As for me, who have only been in New York for two weeks, I am a ruin! Not a reposeful ruin like those I am digging up in Sicily, but rather like those of Pompeii, racked by earthquake and volcanic eruptions. How can you stand it?" Anne smiled indulgently. The Marchese's symbolic hyperboles always amused her. Nestling into her cushions, she sipped her doctored tea. "I am tired, Vittorio! But what else is there to do? One has got to go through the gestures, you know." "Gestures? Contortions, you mean! The life you are leading is about as restful, not to say dignified, as that of a trapeze performer or an animal trainer. You will break down if you don't look out. And it doesn't suit you, carissima, this perpetual chasing. You were intended to be a grande dame, a----" "A Florentine Marchesa?" broke in Anne maliciously. "I believe you would like to see me, old and settled with a flock of bambini clustered about my gouty knees, and a mustache bristling above my dewy lips!"