"what are you thinking about, teddy bear?"
"nothing."
there was a silence. mr. hutton remained motionless, his elbows on the parapet of the terrace, his chin in his hands, looking down over florence. he had taken a villa on one of the hilltops to the south of the city. from a little raised terrace at the end of the garden one looked down a long fertile valley on to the town and beyond it to the bleak mass of monte morello and, eastward of it, to the peopled hill of fiesole, dotted with white houses. everything was clear and luminous in the september sunshine.
"are you worried about anything?"
"no, thank you."
"tell me, teddy bear."
"but, my dear, there's nothing to tell." mr. hutton turned round, smiled, and patted the girl's hand. "i think you'd better go in and have your siesta. it's too hot for you here."
"very well, teddy bear. are you coming too?"
"when i've finished my cigar."
"all right. but do hurry up and finish it, teddy bear." slowly, reluctantly, she descended the steps of the terrace and walked towards the house.
mr. hutton continued his contemplation of florence. he had need to be alone. it was good sometimes to escape from doris and the restless solicitude of her passion. he had never known the pains of loving hopelessly, but he was experiencing now the pains of being loved. these last weeks had been a period of growing discomfort. doris was always with him, like an obsession, like a guilty conscience. yes, it was good to be alone.
he pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it; not without reluctance. he hated letters; they always contained something unpleasant—nowadays, since his second marriage. this was from his sister. he began skimming through the insulting home-truths of which it was composed. the words "indecent haste," "social suicide," "scarcely cold in her grave," "person of the lower classes," all occurred. they were inevitable now in any communication from a well-meaning and right-thinking relative. impatient, he was about to tear the stupid letter to pieces when his eye fell on a sentence at the bottom of the third page. his heart beat with uncomfortable violence as he read it. it was too monstrous! janet spence was going about telling everyone that he had poisoned his wife in order to marry doris. what damnable malice! ordinarily a man of the suavest temper, mr. hutton found himself trembling with rage. he took the childish satisfaction of calling names—he cursed the woman.
then suddenly he saw the ridiculous side of the situation. the notion that he should have murdered anyone in order to marry doris! if they only knew how miserably bored he was. poor, dear janet! she had tried to be malicious; she had only succeeded in being stupid.
a sound of footsteps aroused him; he looked round. in the garden below the little terrace the servant girl of the house was picking fruit. a neapolitan, strayed somehow as far north as florence, she was a specimen of the classical type—a little debased. her profile might have been taken from a sicilian coin of a bad period. her features, carved floridly in the grand tradition, expressed an almost perfect stupidity. her mouth was the most beautiful thing about her; the calligraphic hand of nature had richly curved it into an expression of mulish bad temper.... under her hideous black clothes, mr. hutton divined a powerful body, firm and massive. he had looked at her before with a vague interest and curiosity. to-day the curiosity defined and focused itself into a desire. an idyll of theocritus. here was the woman; he, alas, was not precisely like a goatherd on the volcanic hills. he called to her.
"armida!"
the smile with which she answered him was so provocative, attested so easy a virtue, that mr. hutton took fright. he was on the brink once more—on the brink. he must draw back, oh! quickly, quickly, before it was too late. the girl continued to look up at him.
"ha chiamito?" she asked at last.
stupidity or reason? oh, there was no choice now. it was imbecility every time.
"scendo" he called back to her. twelve steps led from the garden to the terrace. mr. hutton counted them. down, down, down, down.... he saw a vision of himself descending from one circle of the inferno to the next—from a darkness full of wind and hail to an abyss of stinking mud.
