and Lucy because it promised the continuance of life on earth. To Cecil and Lucy it promised something quite different — personal love. Hence Cecil's irritation and Lucy's belief that his irritation was just.

“How tiresome!” she said. “Couldn't you have escaped to tennis?”

“I don't play tennis — at least, not in public. The neighbourhood is deprived of the romance of me being athletic. Such romance as I have is that of the Inglese Italianato.”

“Inglese Italianato?”

“E un diavolo incarnato! You know the proverb?”

She did not. Nor did it seem applicable to a young man who had spent a quiet winter in Rome with his