disguise our thoughts.  It is the same when we are in the boat, reading together, or when I listen to her music.  All our acts seem mere shadows,—­an outward form that hides the real essence of things, with its face still veiled, but following us wherever we go.  Neither of us has given it a name; but we both feel its presence.  Manifestations like these take place probably every time man and woman begin to influence each other.  I could not tell exactly when it began; but I confess it did not come upon me quite unexpectedly.

I accepted their hospitality because Mrs. Davis was my father’s friend; and it was she who, after his death, showed me more sympathy than any one else in Rome.  I have so much consciousness of self, am so able to divide myself, that soon after my arrival here, in spite of my heavy sorrow I had the presentiment that our mutual relation would undergo a change.  I hated myself that so soon after my father’s death I should harbor thoughts like these; but they were there.  I find now that my presentiments were right.  If I said that the changed relation has still its face veiled, I meant to say that I do not know exactly when the veil will be torn asunder, and I am under the spell of expectation.  I should be unsophisticated indeed, if I supposed she were less conscious of all this than I. She is probably more so.  Most likely she is guiding all these changes; and everything that is happening happens according to her wishes and cool reflection.  Diana the Huntress is spreading her net for the game!  But what does it matter to me? what is there for me to lose?  As nearly every man, I am that kind of game which allows itself to be hunted for the purpose of turning at a given moment against the hunter.  In such circumstances we all have energy enough.  In a hand-to-hand fight, like this, the victory rests always with us.  I know perfectly well that Mrs. Davis does not love me, any more than I love her.  We simply react upon each other through our pagan nature, our sensuous and artistic instincts.

With her it is also a question of vanity,—­the worse for her, as it may lead her whither love leads.  I shall not go too far.  In my feeling for her there is neither affection nor tenderness,—­nothing but rapture at the sight of nature’s masterwork, and the attraction natural in a man when that masterwork is a woman.  My father said that the height of victory would be to change an angel into a woman; I maintain that it is no less a triumph to feel around one’s neck the arms, palpitating with life, of a Florentine Venus.

As far as beauty goes she is the highest expression of whatever the most exalted imagination is able to conceive.  She is a Phryne.  It would turn most men’s heads to see her in a tight-fitting riding-habit that shows the outline of her figure as beautiful as that of a statue.  In the boat, reading Dante, she looked like a Sybil, and one could understand a Nero’s sacrilegious passion.  Hers is an almost baleful beauty.  Only the joining eyebrows make her appear a woman of our times, and this makes her all the more irritating.  She has a certain habit of pushing back her hair by putting both hands at the back of her head; then her shoulders are raised; the whole shape acquires a certain curve, and the breast stands firmly out,—­and one feels a desire to carry her off in one’s arms from everybody’s eyes.