 it was pleasant; surely an excellent reason.
    If only he hadn't come up against that confounded artist-fellow! That had
upset him, most absurdly. A half good-looking sort of fellow: a fellow who could
prate with a certain brio; not unlikely to make something of a figure in the
eyes of a girl like Cecily. And what then?
    Before now, Elgar had confessed to a friend that he couldn't read the
marriage-column in a newspaper without feeling a distinct jealousy of all the
male creatures there mentioned.
    He sought out a caffè, and sat there for an hour, drinking a liquor that
called itself lacryma-Christi, but would at once have been detected for a
pretender by a learned palate. He drank it for the first time, and tried to
enjoy it, but his mind kept straying to alien things. When it was nearly four
o'clock, he again went forth, took a carriage, and bade the man drive quickly.
    This time he was successful. A servant conducted him by many stairs and
passages to Mrs. Lessingham's sitting-room. He entered, and found himself alone
with Cecily.
    »Mrs. Lessingham will certainly be back very soon,« she said, in shaking
hands with him. »They told me you had called before, and I thought you would
like better to wait a few minutes than to be disappointed again.«
    »I think of going to Amalfi to-morrow morning, perhaps for a long time,«
remarked the visitor. »I wished to say good-bye.«
    The accumulated impatience and nervousness of the whole morning disturbed
his pulses and put a weight upon his tongue; he spoke with awkward indecision,
held himself awkwardly. His own voice sounded boorish to him after Cecily's
accents.
    Cecily began to speak of how she had spent the day. Her aunt was making
purchases - was later in returning than had been expected. Then she asked for an
account of Elgar's doings since they last met. The conversation grew easier;
Reuben began to recover his natural voice, and to lose disagreeable
self-consciousness in the delight of hearing Cecily and meeting her look. Had he
known her better, he would have observed that she spoke with unusual diffidence,
that she was not quite so self-possessed as of wont, and that her manner was
deficient in the frank gaiety which as a rule made its great charm. Her tone
softened itself in questioning; she listened so attentively that, when he had
ceased speaking, her eyes always rose to
