for her by those whose privilege it was to enable her to unite floral
insouciance with Sheban elegance.

She had met Ralph's first note of warning with the assurance that she
"didn't mean to worry"; and her tone implied that it was his business to
do so for her. He certainly wanted to guard her from this as from all
other cares; he wanted also, and still more passionately after the topic
had once or twice recurred between them, to guard himself from the risk
of judging where he still adored. These restraints to frankness kept him
silent during the remainder of the drive, and when, after dinner, Undine
again complained of her headache, he let her go up to her room and
wandered out into the dimly lit streets to renewed communion with his
problems.

They hung on him insistently as darkness fell, and Siena grew vocal with
that shrill diversity of sounds that breaks, on summer nights, from
every cleft of the masonry in old Italian towns. Then the moon rose,
unfolding depth by depth the lines of the antique land; and Ralph,
leaning against an old brick parapet, and watching each silver-blue
remoteness disclose itself between the dark masses of the middle
distance, felt his spirit enlarged and pacified. For the first time, as
his senses thrilled to the deep touch of beauty, he asked himself if out
of these floating and fugitive vibrations he might not build something
concrete and stable, if even such dull common cares as now oppressed him
might not become the motive power of creation. If he could only, on
the spot, do something with all the accumulated spoils of the last
months--something that should both put money into his pocket and harmony
into the rich confusion of his spirit! "I'll write--I'll write: that
must be what the whole thing means," he said to himself, with a vague
clutch at some solution which should keep him a little longer hanging