The splendours of that great room played upon his feelings with a strange subtlety. He felt the power for mockery which at certain moments resides in lifeless things. With its spell upon him the marble Atlantes began to breathe; their hollow eyes had the gift of sight, and from their high stations between the windows they looked down upon him with cynical interest. He noted for the first time that all the portraits of the Barbiondi were painted with a broad grin. The very walls of the palace chuckled in their re-echo of his solitary footfalls. Entering the library, he closed the door and paced before the printed wisdom of ages; but no quieting message was there for him in all that treasury of placid thought, divine inspiration, human experience. It was as if no Greek had ever meditated, no Christ ever lived, no fellow-being ever suffered. In his own life the tragedy of ages was on for its hour, and the spirit that swayed him was the spirit of the cave-dweller robbed of his female in the dawn of the centuries. The events of the last two weeks rose before him. A vision of all that had come and gone grew vivid in his mind. At first Donna Beatrice and Don Riccardo and Hera were there, each standing in proper relation to the whole; but one by one these faded out to disclose with infuriating boldness the face and figure of Mario Forza. A few minutes more and Tarsis ceased walking to take a seat at the Napoleonic table. He rested one arm on the mosaic and drummed meditatively with the tips of his fingers. There was naught in his bearing now to indicate the storm through which he had passed. Nor was there any sign that he had reached a terrible decision. Again he was the self-centred man of business, calmly at work upon the details of an important project. The prophecy of the kitchen and the stable yard was in the first stage of its realisation. To Mario Forza the account was to be rendered and payment demanded in full. His native impulse was to present the bill in person, to exact a settlement with his own hand; it would be no more than the honouring of a law sacred to his island birthplace. By that method the honey of revenge was sweetest. Nevertheless, for a man of his estate its disadvantages were undeniably real. With a cool head he counted the possible cost and found it too great. An ancient Sicilian proverb ran with his thoughts--“’Tis easier to shed blood than to wash out its stains.” Here was a reasoning that appealed to his mind, accustomed as it was to weigh all in the balance of profit and loss; and so it fell out that he shaped a plan of vengeance that should enlist the service of another. Some one else, skilled in the art, but of smaller importance to himself and the world, should wait upon Signor Forza and--present the bill.