"I am so sorry for Cesano," said Norman. "I did not mean to be rude to him; he is a good man. I am sorry you were so cruel to him. He has not deserved it of you." "Love is cruel! And, O, Normano, Love is divine!" "Love is a very good subject of conversation," said Norman, ungallantly. He was tired, and therefore had sagacious misgivings as to what he had let himself in for. "Good night," he added, and turned on his heel. "Is that all?" said Peronella, opening out her arms. But the wary Englishman had fled. CHAPTER IV INTRODUCING A GOOD BEGGAR AND A BAD KING Beautiful and broken fountains, keep you still your Sultan's dream? _The Golden Journey to' Samarkand._ Despite any irritation he might feel in finding his pretty flirtation degenerate into a sentimental romance which might end ill, for a week Norman led the golden life, and, after all, the golden life can only be led in sunny lands, by him who has a mistress on his arm and music in his soul, and it never lasts more than one week in the same place. The golden life in Alsander means swimming, sunstruck memories of old walls and young faces; it means prospects down tortuous streets of blue mountains towering to the sky or of blue skies falling into bluer seas. It means the discovery of an elegant fountain down this way, of a Roman inscription hidden in moss down that. It means the first view of the Cathedral square. For the façade of the Cathedral of Alsander, first seen of a sudden some early morning, when the square is still, seems an impossible thing--a mirage: it is so vast, so lovely, and so old. But for Norman in Alsander, as for many another, the chill Sunday of disappointment followed the week-days of delight. Naturally the first disappointment was Peronella. We have already hinted at Norman's disappointment. It did not vanish, that disappointment: it grew. Can beauty be boring? Ah! ye gods, it can, if one has to talk to it, and it is stupid. But was Peronella not romantic? Oh, yes, she was indeed, but romantic with a "k." She was romantick like the fair misses of a hundred years ago. But is not the romantick the same as the romantic in principle? Oh, yes, indeed, the sentiment is the same; but to be romantic requires intellect, and to be romantick requires none. But was not Peronella educated? Indeed she was, most abominably educated, quite enough to ruin all the fresh roses of her nature. She had not, could not, alas! read Ella Wheeler Wilcox, her poems, but, oh! how she would have loved them had she known them! Marie Corelli she did read; you may buy her works in Alsandrian. But was she incapable of appreciating true literature? Oh, no, she adored Shakespeare and Byron, which she read in translations. You see, her mother had ideas and considered herself a lady. Nevertheless Peronella began to bore Norman: the spell was broken!