ecstasy over the efforts of the tenor robusto under the balconies of the Grand Hotel. And then, wicked, dreamless slumber. The next morning, the same thing over again.”

5

Jacqueline gasped. She looked at me with a curious intentness, and I was uneasy under her gaze. I knew she was noting quite ruthlessly that I was getting fat.

“It is difficult to keep quite fit in Venice,” I pleaded.

“And you really have done that for three years,” she said at last, almost in admiration. It was as if I were a strange animal doing clever tricks.

“For three years, barring flights to New York and London in January and February, and a few weeks in the Tyrol during July and August,” I answered steadily.

“And you really like it?” she asked, still wonderingly.

“I can never imagine myself liking it again. I have despised myself since last Tuesday.”

“Since last Tuesday!” she echoed, and then blushed. It was on Tuesday that Jacqueline and her aunt had arrived in Venice. “But you are not answering my first question.”

“I am answering it in a roundabout way,” I 6replied dreamily. Then quite abruptly, “You didn’t know me until I was at Oxford, did you?”

6

“No.”

“I was sent to Eton when I was a sickly, timid little chap of fourteen. I had had a lonely life of it in New York. My mother was so afraid I should have a good time like other boys, and shout and play and talk with an American accent, that she chained me to a priggish English tutor, who took me for solemn walks in the park for recreation. I was hardly any better off than the pale-faced little idiots you see marching about Rome and Palermo two by two, dressed up in ridiculous uniforms of broadcloth, and carrying canes–not so well off, for there are many of them, and only one slovenly priest. But my keeper had me all to himself. Think of it, I never held a baseball in my little fist. Imagine that kind of a youngster set down in the midst of half a thousand lusty young English schoolboys, and an American at that.”

“Poor little homesick boy,” she murmured. “And then?”

“Just five years of being shunned and moping and long solitary rows on the river, and dreams bad for a boy of my years–just a long stretch 

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